Medium: Plexiglas with nylon monofilament,
Dimensions: 62.9 x 62.9 x 24.1 cm,
Notes: Gabo made the prototype of his Linear Construction in Space No. 1 (Variation) during the winter of 1942-43 in Cornwall, England, where he had moved with his wife to escape the Nazi bombings of London. It differs slightly from Linear Construction in Space No. 1 (1941-42), Gabo's first sculpture to incorporate the technique of stringing; by the notches or steps on the end pieces of the plastic frame, which both enliven the profile and create a broader, more active spread of the stringing pattern. It was Gabo's practice to recreate certain favorite works in different sizes and sometimes different materials as a way of exploring further the sculptural idea and or fulfilling other purposes such as gifts, sales, or exhibition needs.Gabo's use of stringing, starting at roughly the same time that Henry Moore and Antoine Pevsner adopted this new technique, developed out of his slightly earlier practice of carving or scoring striations into surfaces for a sense of movement, transparency, and expansion, and may also have been prompted by his knowledge of strung mathematical models. renewed influence of these models in the late thirties helped him grapple with problems of topology and spatial curvature, and lies behind the increased physical and conceptual purity of his work from this period. Indeed, the basic structure of Linear Construction in Space No. 1 and its Variation, with strings running diagonally across a rectangular frame to describe an elliptical central void, resembles a common mathematical diagram. Transcending any possible diagrammatic influences, however, are the extremely sensuous effects of delicate movement and radiant light that Gabo achieves in these airy plastic constructions.