Cristea Roberts Gallery Exhibition Information | November 2019 43 Pall Mall, London SW1Y 5JG Press Contact: Elle Shea +44 (0)20 7439 1866
[email protected] [email protected] +44 (0)20 7439 1866 www.cristearoberts.com Naum Gabo: Spatial Impressions 9 January - 8 February 2020 Private View Wednesday 8 January 2020, 6 - 7.30pm The Realistic Manifesto was published on the occasion of an open air exhibition in Moscow by Gabo and Pevsner, just three years after the Russian Revolution and two years after the end of the First World War. It acted as the focal point of debate within Russia on what the role of art should be. Gabo and Pevsner’s belief was that art should reflect the modern world or that, in their words, “the realisation of our perceptions of the world in the forms of space and time is the only aim of our pictorial and plastic art.” It was 30 years after the publication of The Realistic Manifesto that Gabo, encouraged by William Irvins, a former curator of prints at the Museum of Modern Art, made his first print. This initial experiment, an impression taken from the bottom of a chair leg, whetted Gabo’s appetite for the medium and he went on to produce an extensive body of woodcuts over the next 25 years. His main body of monoprints, Opus I – XII, some of which will be on display in this exhibition, consisted of twelve works or ‘Opera’ of which he made numerous printed variants. None were editioned, but instead the artist used the woodblocks to create unique versions, in each case showing how, by altering colour, tone, paper and orientation, he could radically change the nature and balance of a single composition.