Naum Gabo

V. N. Buchanan, England (acquired directly from the artist)
Hanover Gallery, London (acquired from the above in November 1960)
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1962

Herbert Read & Leslie Martin, Gabo: Constructions, Sculpture, Paintings, Drawings, Engravings, London, 1957, no. 86, mentioned p. 184; illustration of another version pl. 86
Studio International, London, vol. 171, no. 876, April 1966, illustrated on the cover
Steven A. Nash & Jörn Merkert, Naum Gabo, Sixty Years of Constructivism, Munich, 1985, no. 55.8, illustrations of a larger version pp. 79 & 122
Martin Hammer & Christina Lodder, Constructing Modernity, The Art and Career of Naum Gabo, New Haven, 2000, illustration of another version p. 324

The work is in very good original condition, presented suspended in a perspex box. There are a few very minor surface scratches to the perspex visible only on very close examination from certain angles. There is some slight dust to some areas of the work.
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Linear Construction in Space No. 2, one of the most numerous and celebrated of Gabo's sculptural forms, was a theme developed from Gabo's unrealised project for the lobby of the Esso Building in New York in the late 1940s. This, the artist's first commission in America, was issued by Nelson Rockefeller and the intention was for two sculptures, similar to the present work (see Nash & Merkert, op. cit., no. 55), to be placed above two revolving lobby doors, rotating slowly. Gabo wrote of this project: 'I have seen the place and I think that the whole thing is a challenge to me. I have the feeling that here is a case where I simply have to show what Constructive art can do in connection with architecture... to prove that the Constructive sculpture is not just a theory for heaven but a very real, aesthetic solution to our everyday life' (quoted in Hammer & Lodder, op. cit., p. 322). As Gabo declared in his Realistic Manifesto of 1920, 'In the squares and on the streets we are placing our work convinced that art must not remain a sanctuary for the idle, a consolation for the rich ... Art should attend us everywhere that life flows and acts' (quoted in Naum Gabo: The Constructive Process, The Tate Gallery, London, pp. 25-26).

Despite Gabo's altruistic aspirations the Esso project was curtailed due to construction costs, however Gabo continued to return to what would be one of his favourite themes regularly between 1949 and circa 1976. In total 26 versions of Linear Construction in Space No. 2 were executed, each with unique variations and ranging in size from 30cm. to 115cm. The constructions were designed to be presented alternatively vertically upright on a base, lying horizontally or suspended. One version was destroyed in 1970 and of the 25 remaining, ten are housed in museum collections around the world including the Tate, London; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.