Geometry and Symmetry — Sculpture No. 3

‘My trust in the power of imagination did indeed bear fruit eventually’, writes Araeen on his first artistic steps in London. This work, like the First Sculpture, came together as a result of an idea based on observation: ‘I found myself looking at some drawings of symmetrical configurations of equal size steel girders’, Araeen remembers, ‘As I kept looking at them, there suddenly appeared in front of me a series of sculptures, and I could not help saying: ‘Wahoo! I got it’.

It seems that Araeen arrived independently at 'the engineer's truth', an important concept of the Soviet Constructivists. 'The engineer's truth' was not only the employment of clearly technical materials and forms but also the insistence on ‘the real participation of the intellectual element in creating communist culture’, as the first program of Constructivists announced in 1921. Araeen's initial idea for Sculpture could not be realized right away, as the artist did not have the means to make a work of that size and weight. Accordingly, he turned to lattice works, which proved to be the start of a flexible and universal aesthetic.