‘Thank you for the question; it’s a good one. The term is an attempt to capture a hybrid state for a particular work or group of works. Constructivism, as you may know, is the name of an attitude worked out after the Russian Revolution by Alexander Rodchenko
and others as a way of combatting the ancient protocols of ‘composition’ in art: its emphases were on the efficient use of material, on functionality, and on efficiency both in the making and in the using – in effect a revolution in art itself that from the
beginning was intended to dovetail with ‘actual production’, that is, the manufacture of useful things. To begin with, the straight line, cut or edge was the main formal ingredient: a technical appearance, if you like, as well as a technical function. Much
later, after the spread of Constructivist methods to every European country (and beyond), other impulses were admitted. Rerences to actual landscape, curved and irregular forms, even at a stretch ‘nature’, were found to be usable alongside the efficiency principal.
To the original Constructivists this would have seemed wrong (with some notable exceptions). But times change, and western Europe in the 1940s and 1950s was no longer in a revolutionary situation and artistic values inevitably change. That’s a very brief answer’.
The George Dannatt Trust 
Hi , I would love to have more information about G.Dannatt and why some works are described as “Lyrical constructivist “
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‘Thank you for the question; it’s a good one. The term is an attempt to capture a hybrid state for a particular work or group of works. Constructivism, as you may know, is the name of an attitude worked out after the Russian Revolution by Alexander Rodchenko
and others as a way of combatting the ancient protocols of ‘composition’ in art: its emphases were on the efficient use of material, on functionality, and on efficiency both in the making and in the using – in effect a revolution in art itself that from the
beginning was intended to dovetail with ‘actual production’, that is, the manufacture of useful things. To begin with, the straight line, cut or edge was the main formal ingredient: a technical appearance, if you like, as well as a technical function. Much
later, after the spread of Constructivist methods to every European country (and beyond), other impulses were admitted. Rerences to actual landscape, curved and irregular forms, even at a stretch ‘nature’, were found to be usable alongside the efficiency principal.
To the original Constructivists this would have seemed wrong (with some notable exceptions). But times change, and western Europe in the 1940s and 1950s was no longer in a revolutionary situation and artistic values inevitably change. That’s a very brief answer’.
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