Exhibition of the week Naum Gabo
Tate St Ives, Cornwall (01736-796226, tate.org.uk). Until 27 September
At the outbreak of the Second World War, the pioneering Russian sculptor Naum Gabo moved to the Cornish fishing port of St Ives, said Rachel Spence in the FT – joining a flourishing artistic community there that included Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth. So it is “fitting” that the first major exhibition in the UK devoted to Gabo’s work in over 30 years should take place here. He was part of “a vibrant generation of Russian creatives who called themselves Constructivists”. They believed that there should be “no boundaries between disciplines, and that materials should be modern and mass-produced”. Gabo’s thrillingly futuristic sculptures, which drew as much on industrial design as they did art history, were a visual testament to this vision. As Stalin’s regime became ever more repressive, the avant-garde was gradually suppressed, and artists were pressured to adopt “dreary socialist realism”. Gabo had already left Russia, living in various countries across Europe. Although he eventually settled in America, his innovative ideas had a profound influence on the British modernists. This show brings together around 80 exhibits dating from every stage of Gabo’s long career, including sculptures, drawings, architectural models and archival material. It adds up to a fine introduction to this “mystic polymath” and his often exhilarating work.
Born Naum Neemia Pevsner to a Jewish family in southwest Russia, the young artist immersed himself in the study of natural sciences, medicine, philosophy and engineering, said Laura Freeman in The Spectator. This technical formation would underpin the boundless enthusiasm of his work in the “all-things-possible period” around the Russian Revolution. Early sculptures such as 1916’s Head No. 2 transform the human anatomy into “metallic, mechanised” forms: “tailfin cheeks, mineshaft noses, shovel chins and propeller shoulders”. The motor-powered Kinetic Construction (Standing Wave) (1919-20) vibrates with “a musical thrum” at the push of a button. You can also see drawings for a ballet Gabo designed for Sergei Diaghilev, in which dancers are clad in “rhomboid fascinator hats”; his impractical plastic leggings were discarded in rehearsal.
More than anything else, Gabo was “entranced by flight”, said Rachel Campbell-Johnston in The Times. Most of his sculptures are ultimately homages to its “aerial beauties”, reflecting “its freedom and energy, its dynamism and light”. This lifelong obsession fed into the large public commissions he took on later in life, represented here by maquettes: a model for the fountain he built at St Thomas’s Hospital in London, for instance, envisages “spiralling jets of water that created glittering rotating patterns”. Perhaps more “fascinating” still are Gabo’s “unrealised architectural plans” for Stalin’s Palace of the Soviets. Topped out with a “rooftop helipad”, this 1930s design still looks extraordinarily futuristic. It is just one highlight of a “remarkable” exhibition that confirms its subject as both a technical wizard and an artist capable of producing work of genuine emotional heft.