Naum Gabo at Tate St.Ives 25th Jan to May 3rd 2020

Naum Gabo at Tate St.Ives. (1890-1977)


On the way in through gallery one there is a beautiful golden coloured Gabo, made of bronze, looking a bit too large for its corner and apparently at one stage it was in the main show. I'm told it's too fragile on its minimal support to be allowed out of its protective acrylic case. It's simple, geometric, metal formed into a curvilinear form, constructed using machinery to acheive a perfectly satisfying composition. Its presence in a room with Brian Wynter, Sandra Blow etc. claims him as one of our own in St.Ives.

The Gabo show entrance before the large gallery has a large female head made of planes of metal also feeling very oversized in its space and a small golden work high up in a corner, for those who find it, placed like an icon in a home.

It's a hundred years since Naum Gabo, after leaving to avoid being enlisted in World War One, returned to be an enthusiastic part of the early revolutionary excitement and was distributing his Realistic Manifesto in the streets of Moscow. One copy is in a display case with a translation below but I wonder why the show wasn't constructed around these glorious sentences which carry the flavour of a time we can hardly imagine when a unifying vision of better times had swept Lenin and the Bolsheviks to power. Artists saw abstraction not as the chic accompaniment to a second home it may be today but as a rejection of worn out cliches and a leap forward to an art that sought something essential and meaningful that would affect the whole of society.

'Today is the deed.
We will account for it tomorrow.
The past we are leaving behind as carrion.
The future we leave to fortune tellers.
We take the present day.'


The exhibition is split in half by a curved grey hospital curtain which has even an instruction not to touch it inscribed on the floor and I was puzzled as to why this was made such a dominating feature. I mentioned this to a woman who turned out to be Nina Williams, Gabo's daughter, born in Carbis Bay 1941, and she said she was delighted with the whole display, but I would have prefered it to be removed.

There is a charming video of Nina playing with a toy her father made her in which tiny models are activated by static electricity.

There are models for buildings, monuments, sculptures, mono prints, paintings, drawings and films so you get a great idea of the wide scope of Gabo's work. I loved the film of La Chatte ballet using dancers with circular and square frames wielded wittily. Gabo constructed work with new materials aiming to work with space and kinetic possibilities.

The walls have been painted subtle green and dark turquoise and make an interesting change from the white austerity which has become routine for modernist galleries.


Gabo left Russia again. From my internet research, which I recommend as there are so many images if Gabo's works available and even film of him speaking, I find that he did not fit in with Tatlin and El Lissitsky's views and was not admitted to the Central Soviet of Artists which would have guaranteed him paid work.

Gabo chose to leave and was not to be allowed back until 1962.The tide was already turning from the early revolutionary embracing of pure abstraction and Gabo left for Germany, later as anti semitism grew, moving on to Paris and London, and arriving in St.Ives where he was for seven years.

Here Gabo influenced Barbara Hepworth but felt she stole his ideas rather him becoming a valued member of the incrowd. He left for America 1946, where he found fame and fortune.

Gabo was the son of a wealthy industrialist who owned metal works and the father's finance enabled Naum to travel and pursue art. He said he was converted to the revolution at the age of fifteen on seeing Cossack brutality in putting down the early protests in Russia. He had been
expelled from primary school for writing subversive poetry about the headmaster. He had not been admitted to St.Petersberg Art School and remained self taught.


Nowadays it's difficult to think of any artist rising to prominence without the required education and a string of official awards and residences.- as evidenced by the other artist featured at Tate St,Ives at the moment - Emily Speed.


So, ironically the revolutionary Gabo who left Russia, perhaps because his dedication to his art outweighed his political fervour, succeeded because of his capitalist father's funding and made his own residences moving from country to country. His influence on international art and design was considerable.


I would have liked some context about the Russian artists with whom Gabo parted company, but these one person shows are devoted to the idea of one genius so comparisons with these and with Hepworth are left to the visitor to make for themselves.