Gertrude Greene: Purity

Gertrude Greene - Construction - 1935 - Painted wood, board, and metal - 16 x 24" (40.6 x 61 cm) - MoMA, New York (click photo for larger image)American artist Gertrude Glass Greene (1904-1956)  looked to the purity of Mondrian and Russian Constructivists Antoine Pevsner, Naum Gabo, and Vladimir Tatlin for her artistic foundations, avoiding overt commentary in her art. She became fascinated with the Constructivists’ ideas about unifying art and politics—their belief that when "purified," art would show the way for reordering society along higher planes. 

Even more than the theory, however, Greene was impressed with the work of such artists as Naum Gabo and began doing Constructivist drawings. 

Greene was also an activist. She helped establish the Unemployed Artists' Group, which was formed to lobby for federal support for unemployed painters, sculptors, and printmakers. 

“In 1937, when the American Abstract Artists was formed, Greene was its first paid employee. She tended the desk at the Squibb Gallery exhibition in 1937, passing out questionnaires and answering the queries and jibes about the art that was featured in the first annual show. Her own work was also shown that year in the opening exhibition of the Museum of Non-Objective Painting.”

Marcel Janco: Bridging Multiple Genres

Marcel Janco - Composition with Red Arrow - 1918 Plaster and casein on burlap, mounted on cardboard - 19 3/4 x 26 1/2 in. - The Art Institute of Chicago - Chicago, IL (click photo for larger image)Romanian-Israeli artist Marcel Janco (1895-1984) was born in Bucharest. In 1910–14 he exhibited at the salons in Bucharest and moved among modernist artists and poets. In 1916, while studying architecture, he was among the founders of Dada in Zurich. There he participated in the famous evenings at Café Voltaire where he was in charge of the stage and costume design. In the 1920s he was much involved in the Dada movement. He had ties with the Paris branch, participating there in an international exhibition of abstract art, and was one of the founders of the art and literature journal Contimporanul. He eventually drifted away from Dada and moved toward Constructivism, a style or movement in which assorted mechanical objects are combined into abstract mobile structural forms.

In 1940, following the rise of fascism in Romania, he immigrated with his family to Ereẓ Israel. In Israel, Janco participated in many important exhibitions including those of New Horizons and the Venice Biennale.Janco played a major role in the modernization of Israeli Art, importing the latest trends in Constructivism from Romania. Once established he joined local artists in developing a more abstract approach to depictions of the local landscape and also turned his attention to pertinent local themes. Janco's significance for avant-garde Israeli Art continues today, through the still-active artist's colony he established in Ein Hod.

Nuam Gabo: A Pioneer of Constructivism

Nuam Gabo - Head No. 2 - 1916, enlarged version 1964 - Steel - Object: 1753 x 1340 x 1226 mm - Tate Gallery, London (click photo for larger image)Constructivist artist Naum Gabo (1890-1977) ( http://www.naum-gabo.com) was born Naum Neemia Pevsner in Russia in 1890. He began making constructed sculpture in Norway in 1915, when he took the name of Gabo. He used materials such as glass, plastic, and metal and created a sense of spatial movement in his work. During the 1920s, Gabo worked with a number of the Bauhaus artist. In later years, curves replaced angles in Gabo’s new spatial constructions, made of taut wire and plastic thread. 

Constructivism was a Russian artistic and architectural movement that was initially influenced by Cubism and Futurism. It is generally considered to have been initiated in 1913 with the “painting reliefs”—abstract geometric constructions—of Vladimir Tatlin. Gabo and his brother, Antoine Pevsner, joined Tatlin and his followers in Moscow, and became spokesmen of the movement. In Constructivism, assorted mechanical objects are combined into abstract mobile structural forms. The movement has influenced many aspects of modern architecture and design.