The Constructivism was an artistic and architectonic movement born in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. The Russian artists Naum Gabo (1890-1977) and his brother Antoine Pevsner (1886-1962) were in large part responsible for the disclosure and diffusion of the movement outside Russia, particularly in Paris and in England. Between them, Gabo was surely the one to be influenced by mathematical models in his own artistic production. Probably Gabo had the chance to see some mathematical models while he was studying medicine in Munich. Gabo’s first sculptures, influenced by Cubism, for example the Head n. 21, recollect the surface’s models made with interlocking cross sections.

A 1936’s drawing, Study for Construction in Space: Crystal (1937–1939, cellulose acetate, Tate Modern, London), seems to be instead a tracing of one of the figures contained in the section mathematical models in the 14th edition of the British Encyclopaedia.