Model for «Constructed Torso» (1917, reassembled 1981)

Mediums: cardboard.
Location: Tate Gallery, London (the UK).

This is one of the experimental key works of Naum Gabo, constructing which he offered the newest sculpture to abandon the traditional ideas about the volume and mass of creation. He did not sculpt or model, but built the work by glueing (later – welding) small parts. In this sculpture, these are cut pieces of cardboard. He composed the entire sculpture, including its torso, from intersecting planes, thereby expressing the dynamics of not only the appearance of the character but also the internal spaces of the figure. He made the sculpture, which he conceived while his stay in Norway, in Russia. A new working method was successfully tested; the sculptor always considered it more practical and more appropriate to the realities of depth and space.