Naum Gabo

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(b Klimovichi, Belarus, 5 Aug 1890; d Waterbury, CT, 23 Aug 1977). American sculptor of Belorussian birth. He was brought up in the Russian town of Bryansk, where his father owned a metallurgy business. Early paintings display his romantic and literary spirit, for example Self-portrait (c. 1907-10; artist's family priv. col., see 1986 exh. cat., pl. 128), but in 1910 he went to the University of Munich to study medical and scientific subjects (1910-12), then philosophy and history of art (1912-14). The lectures of Heinrich W?lfflin and the writings of Henri Bergson were significant influences on him at this time. Gabo also studied engineering at the Technische Hochschule, Munich (1912-14), where there was a large collection of mathematical models. During World War I he took refuge in Norway (1914-17) and started working with his 'stereometric method' of construction, one of several techniques he adopted from such models, and through which he made a significant contribution to the development of the language of Constructivism. This enabled him to make images from sheet materials such as cardboard, plywood and galvanized iron, incorporating space in the body of the work and thereby denying the solidity of matter. Around this time he adopted the surname Gabo to distinguish himself from his brother, the artist ANTOINE PEVSNER.

See the Abbreviations for further details.

The Russian sculptor and designer Naum Gabo (1890-1977) was a pioneer of the constructivist art movement in Russia after the Revolution. He demonstrated in his work the potentialities of plastics and threaded constructions.

Naum Gabo changed his name from Naum Neemia Pevsner to distinguish himself from his artist brother, Antoine Pevsner. Gabo was born on August 5, 1890, in Briansk, Russia, an area now known as Belarus. He was the son of an executive in a copper refinery. In 1910 he went to Munich to study medicine, but after a year he switched to engineering and physics. While in Munich he attended lectures in art history by the celebrated scholar Heinrich Wölfflin. Gabo met Wassily Kandinsky and was enthusiastic over the exhibitions of the Blaue Reiter group, to which Kandinsky belonged.

In 1913 Gabo went to Paris to see Pevsner, who had a studio there and who introduced him to friends involved in the modern movement in art. Gabo and Pevsner went to Oslo after World War I was declared, and there, in 1915, Gabo made his first sculptures. These pieces were cubist. He used sheet metal and celluloid to build abstract likenesses of human beings; one example is his Head of a Woman (1916), composed of opaque celluloid cut, bent, and attached to a flat plane to become a high relief extending from a flat surface.

In 1917 after the Revolution, Gabo and Pevsner settled in Moscow. Gabo by this time had developed a distinct style of his own. They renewed their acquaintance with Kandinsky, who introduced them to Kasimir Malevich, Vladimir Tatlin, and other avant-garde artists. Gabo established a studio and accepted students. At first he and his brother supported the Revolution as a liberating force, not only for social good but for the welfare of art. There was a move, however, toward the use of art as propaganda to further the aims of the state. Certain artists, Tatlin among them, insisted that this was essential and supported the politicians.

Published Art Philosophy

Gabo and Pevsner maintained that art must be autonomous and rise above temporary demands or it will cease to be art. In their Realist Manifesto published in the form of a broadsheet in 1920 they stated that space and time are fundamental to life and that art aimed at being one with the essence of the real must accept this basic premise. Art should concentrate on the dynamic aspects of life and reveal its energy, force, and rhythm. To accomplish this, mass must be abandoned as the basic element in sculpture and new materials used to make manifest the modern spirit. Consistent with the program of the manifesto, Gabo in 1920 produced Kinetic Composition, a construction that used a motor to rotate a steel blade; this piece is the earliest known example of kinetic sculpture.

In 1922 Gabo and Pevsner left Russia. Gabo spent the next decade in Berlin and exhibited regularly with the Novembergruppe. His work acquired architectural characteristics and monumentality. These developments are evident in his Column (1923), a shimmering upright sculpture of intersecting glass pieces on a metal base. He also used sheets of clear plastic scored to catch the light and create linear patterns. He and Pevsner collaborated in designing sets for Sergei Diaghilev's ballet La Chatte (1927).

Gabo lived in Paris from 1932 to 1936, exhibiting with the Abstraction-Création group, and then went to London and stayed for a decade. He was one of the editors of Circle, a periodical dedicated to promoting constructivist art. Gabo's sculptures at this time continued along the path established in Paris, but he exploited materials further. He was introduced to perspex, a new plastic from Imperial Chemical Industries, and used this material in some of his best-known works. He used transparent plastic tubing or plastic sheet made into warped, parabolic planes shot through with parallel nylon threading. The taut, delicate webbing of strings crisscrossed as the sculpture was moved. In some pieces he incorporated silver, gold, and aluminum wire; when set against a dark ground, they appeared ethereal. Gabo married Mariam Israels in 1937, and they had a daughter.

Arrived in United States

Gabo settled in America in 1946. Following an important exhibition of his works in 1948 he began to receive commissions for public works. He completed his Construction Suspended in Space for the Baltimore Museum of Art in 1951. He taught at the Harvard University School of Architecture (1953-1954). One of the monumental pieces he executed is his 81-foot construction that stands in front of the Bijenkorf Department Store in Rotterdam (1955-1957). This work is composed largely of a bronze-coated steel mesh that adheres to a skeletal frame resembling an upright seedpod. About the same time, he executed a wall relief for the U.S. Rubber Company in Rockefeller Center, New York City, and another one for the Baltimore, Maryland, museum. Also during the 1950s, Gabo took up wood engraving to explore the same concepts as his sculpture. He used this technique in his work through the mid-1970s.

Gabo's attempt to explore the fourth dimension, kinetic effects, as put forth in his Manifesto, was not literally followed up in most of his works. The Monument for the Institute of Physics and Mathematics (1925) contains rotating elements, and the Vertical Construction No. 2 (1964-64) is rotated by a motor, but otherwise motion is generally restricted to hanging sculptures that rotate freely. He received many honors including the American Art Institute's Logan Medal (1954), the Brandeis Award (1960), and a Guggenheim Fellowship. A retrospective exhibition of his work toured Europe in 1965-66. Gabo died August 23, 1977, in Waterbury, Connecticut. He was 87.

Further Reading

The Museum of Modern Art catalog, Naum Gabo - Antoine Pevsner (1948), contains short texts by Ruth Olson and Abraham Chanin and an introduction by Herbert Read. Gabo: Constructions, Sculpture, Paintings, Drawings, Engravings (1957) has several fine plates and 10 stereoscopic color slides, and a bibliography by Bernard Karpel.

Further information on Gabo can be found in Jane Turner, ed., The Dictionary of Art (1996), and James Vinson, ed., International Dictionary of Art and Artists (1990).

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Naum Gabo
Kinetic sculpture/fountain by Naum Gabo at Guy's and St Thomas's Hospital, London, U.K.
Birth name	Naum Neemia Pevsner
Born	1 August 1890(1890-08-01) Bryansk
Died	23 August 1977 (aged 87)
Nationality	Russian
Field	Sculpture, Kinetic art
Movement	Constructivism

Metal sculpture by Naum Gabo in Rotterdam, Netherland.

Naum Gabo KBE, born Naum Neemia Pevsner (5 August 1890 - 23 August 1977) was a prominent Russian sculptor in the Constructivism movement and a pioneer of Kinetic Art.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Constructivism 3 Gabo's Theory of Art 4 Writings 5 External links

Early life

Gabo grew up in a Jewish family of six children in the provincial Russian town of Bryansk, where his father owned a metal works. His older brother was fellow Constructivist artist Antoine Pevsner; Gabo changed his name to avoid confusion with him. Gabo was a fluent speaker and writer of German, French, and English in addition to his native Russian. His command of several languages contributed greatly to his mobility during his career. “As in thought, so in feeling, a vague communication is no communication at all," Gabo once remarked.

After school in Kursk, Gabo entered Munich University in 1910, first studying medicine, then the natural sciences, and attended art history lectures by Heinrich Wölfflin. In 1912 Gabo transferred to an engineering school in Munich where he discovered abstract art and met Wassily Kandinsky and in 1913-14 joined his brother Antoine (who by then was an established painter) in Paris. Gabo's engineering training was key to the development of his sculptural work that often used machined elements. During this time he won acclamations by many critics and awards like the Logan Medal of the arts.

Constructivism

After the outbreak of war, Gabo moved first to Copenhagen then Oslo with his older brother Alexei, making his first constructions under the name Naum Gabo in 1915. These earliest constructions originally in cardboard or wood were figurative such as the Head No.2 in the Tate collection. He moved back to Russia in 1917, to become involved in politics and art, spending five years in Moscow with his brother Antoine.

Gabo contributed to the Agit-prop open air exhibitions and taught at 'VKhUTEMAS' the Higher Art and Technical Workshop, with Tatlin, Kandinsky and Rodchenko. During this period the reliefs and construction became more geometric and Gabo began to experiment with kinetic sculpture though the majority of the work was lost or destroyed. Gabo's designs had become increasingly monumental but there was little opportunity to apply them commenting 'It was the height of civil war, hunger and disorder in Russia. To find any part of machinery … was next to impossible'. Gabo wrote and issued jointly with Antoine Pevsner in August 1920 a 'Realistic Manifesto' proclaiming the tenets of pure Constructivism - the first time that the term was used. In the manifesto Gabo criticised Cubism and Futurism as not becoming fully abstract arts and stated that the spiritual experience was the root of artistic production. Gabo and Pevsner promoted the manifesto by staging an exhibition on a bandstand on Tverskoy Boulevard in Moscow and posted the manifesto on hoardings around the city.

In Germany Gabo came into contact with the artists of the de Stijl and taught at the Bauhaus in 1928. During this period he realised a design for a fountain in Dresden (since destroyed). Gabo and Antoine Pevsner had a joint exhibition at the Galerie Percier, Paris in 1924 and the pair designed the set and costumes for Diaghilev's ballet La Chatte (1926) that toured to Paris and London. To escape the rise of the Nazis in Germany the pair stayed in Paris in 1932-5 as members of the Abstraction-Creation group with Piet Mondrian.

Gabo visited London in 1935, and settled in 1936, where he found a 'spirit of optimism and sympathy for his position as an abstract artist'. At the outbreak of the WW2 he followed his friends Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson to St Ives in Cornwall, where he stayed initially with the art critic Adrian Stokes. Whilst in Cornwall he continued to work, albeit on a smaller scale. His influence was very important to the development of modernism within St Ives, and it can be seen most conspicuously in the paintings and constructions of John Wells and Peter Lanyon, both of whom developed a softer more pastoral form of Constructivism.

Gabo's Theory of Art

The essence of Gabo's art was the exploration of space which he believed could be done without having to depict mass. His earliest constructions such as Head No.2 were formal experiments in depicting the volume of a figure without carrying its mass. Gabo's other concern as described in the Realist Manifesto was that art needed to exist actively in four dimensions including time.

Gabo's formative years were in Munich, where he was inspired by and actively participated in the artistic, scientific, and philosophical debates of the early years of the 20th century. Because of his involvement in these intellectual debates, Gabo became a leading figure in Moscow’s avant garde, in post-Revolution Russia. It was in Munich that Gabo attended the lectures of art historian Heinrich Wolfflin and gained knowledge of the ideas of Einstein and his fellow innovators of scientific theory, as well as the philosopher Henri Bergson. As a student of medicine, natural science and engineering, his understanding of the order present in the natural world mystically links all creation in the universe. Just before the onset of the First World War in 1914, Gabo discovered contemporary art, by reading Kandinsky’s Concerning the Spiritual in Art, which asserted the principles of abstract art.

Gabo’s vision is imaginative and passionate, over the years his exhibitions have generated immense enthusiasm because of the emotional power present in his sculpture. Gabo said of his own sculpture that he himself was “making images to communicate my feelings of the world.” In his work, Gabo used time and space as construction elements and in them solid matter unfolds and becomes beautifully surreal and otherworldly. His sculptures initiate a connection between what is tangible and intangible, between what is simplistic in its reality and the unlimited possibilities of intuitive imagination. Imaginative as Gabo was, his practicality lent itself to the conception and production of his works. He devised systems of construction which were not only used for his elegantly elaborate sculptures but were viable for architecture as well. He was also innovative in his works, using a wide variety of materials including the earliest plastics, fishing line, bronze, sheets of Perspex, and boulders. He sometimes even used motors to move the sculpture.

London’s South Bank Centre is the location of the largest collection of Gabo’s sculpture. Caroline Collier, the gallery exhibition organizer there and an authority on Gabo’s work said, “The real stuff of Gabo’s art is not his physical materials, but his perception of space, time and movement. In the calmness at the ‘still centre’ of even his smallest works, we sense the vastness of space, the enormity of his conception, time as continuous growth.” In fact, the element of movement in Gabo’s sculpture is connected to a strong rhythm, more implicit and deeper than the chaotic patterns of life itself. The exactness of form leads the viewer to imagine journeying into, through, over and around his sculptures.

Gabo wrote his Realistic Manifesto, in which he ascribed his philosophy for his constructive art and his joy at the opportunities opened up by the Russian Revolution. Gabo saw the Revolution as the beginning of a renewal of human values. Five thousand copies of the manifesto tract were displayed in Moscow streets in 1920.

Gabo had lived through a revolution and two world wars; he was also Jewish and had fled Nazi Germany. Gabo’s acute awareness of turmoil sought out solace in the peacefulness that was so fully realized in his “ideal” art forms. It was in his sculpture that he evaded all the chaos, violence, and despair he had survived. Gabo chose to look past all that was dark in his life, creating sculptures that though fragile are balanced so as to give us a sense of the constructions delicately holding turmoil at bay.

Writings

• Of Divers Arts by Naum Gabo,Faber and Faber New York 1962 ISBN 978-0571052318

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Category:Naum Gabo

• Naum Gabo at the Tate Gallery Archive

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