Interrelation of Volumes

Georges Vantongerloo's Interrelation of Volumes was one of the artists earliest abstract sculptures -- his aim to "render visible the beauty of space". Largely influenced by the writings of the philosopher M. H. J. Schoenmaekers, Vantongerloo visualized space as a combination of the volumes of objects and the voids that surround them. Interrelation of Volumes is the artist's attempt to give solid form to the relationships between pure, geometric shapes. Vantongerloo wrote that:

"If in sculpture, the interrelation of volumes achieves unity, it is because everything is balanced."

 During this time period Vantongerloo's sculptures moved away from his early impressionistic style of the human form towards a greater geometric and biomorphic abstraction. In these works the human figure is comprised solely of geometric shapes. Although he published a schematic compositional analysis of Alexander Archipenko's The Gondolier in De Stijl, I, as early as September 1918, his early references to sculpture are mostly in terms of an interrelationship of volumes and voids. Its thus unlikely that Interrelation of Volumes is based on any geometrical system of proportions, whereas this is characteristic of his later sculptures of the same type and is indicated by their titles

Source:
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/vantongerloo-interrelation-of-volumes-t02306/text-catalogue-entry