Interestingly, a film of the ballet La Chatte played in the background, a collaborative work by Sergei Diaghilev and Gabo, which opened in 1927 at the Theatre de Monte Carlo. Gabo made the plastic constructions attached to the dancers, extending their bodies and movements. The success of La Chatte encouraged Gabo to experiment further with film as an animation, a way to activate his forms.
The experimentation came to a sudden end with the death, in 1929, of Gabo’s partner, Elizabeth Richter, the first wife of Hans Richter. He expressed his emotion then in poetry.
When Gabo came to live in London in 1935 he met Miriam, an American painter, who he married in 1937. Their daughter, Nina, was born in Cornwall.
In the next few years he exhibited in London, Switzerland, Paris and the USA. In 1939, like Ben Nicholson, he became an air raid warden in Cornwall and began to paint in oil.
Gabo designed and built playground structures and games too – a helter skelter, a pool slide, and a spirograph. There was also the Constructivist Ballet, a game created for Nina in 1940. As toys were scarce, he made tiny dancing forms: Japanese lanterns and coils from coloured plastic and foil. These were animated to dance on the stage by rubbing a duster on top of the dome. The static electricity made the pinhead figures dance.
In a video, Nina recalls that it was a teatime treat played under supervision (Freeman, L. 2020), giving us an insight into the playfulness of Gabo, the man and father. You can watch the video by clicking here.
In 1946 Gabo left for the USA with his family and lectured on constructivist art among other topics. In 1949, he created Linear Construction in Space No 2 for the lobby of the Esso Building in New York. This was one of his favourite works of which he made 26 versions.
La Chatte Ballet © Tate
Construction in Space: Vertical (1923-5) Reassembled in 1986 in glass, painted brass and plastic on a black painted wooden base.
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