March 16, 1969

06762

USA

Mr. Eli Bornstein
University of Saskatchewan
Saskatoon, Canada

Dear Mr. Bornstein,

I want you to print the enclosed statement in the next number of the "Structurist".

For your information and not for publication; it is entirely incomprehensible to me that you, as an Editor, could not judge by yourself and know that every word in the Dictionary has several synonyms and that a "literal translation" is worthless without understanding of the spirit and sense of the original.

Having read many publications from the USSR in the last few years, I know that Miss Camilla Grey has been drawn into a campaign against my "Realistic Manifesto" and its ideology for the past several years and her interpretation in her own book about, specifically, the history of Constructive Art, is done for ulterior reasons more than for the search for truth because it is known to me that all she knows about it, she knows from the official guides--- the party bosses in the field of Art who hate the whole Constructive Movement and lately are particularly trying to denigrate my position in it.

In the last years, the Constructive Ideas in Art, as they are represented in my work and the interest in my work amongst the younger generation, have grown in spite of the party's persecution and the party does everything possible to destroy me because they cannot reach me.

They have destroyed artistically, Malevich, Tatlin and the rest of my comrades in Russia. They have shot many of them and annihilated as artists the younger comrades who were active in the '20's. Nevertheless, because they are dead, they grant them their importance posthumously---only to be able to boast before the West European art historians that "they did it first"---but anyhow, that is of no importance.

I am, to them, a deserter. Had I stayed in the country, I would be dead artistically as the rest of my comrades and the party would include me in their boast.

(Gabo)