Naum Gabo

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). □

Gabo, Naum ( Naum Neemia Pevsner) (1890– 1977). Russian-born sculptor who became an American citizen in 1952, the most influential exponent of Constructivism. He was born in Klimovichi, Belarus, and brought up in Briansk, where his father ran a prosperous metallurgy business. His surname was originally Pevsner, but he adopted another family name, Gabo, in 1915 to avoid confusion with his younger brother, Antoine Pevsner. In 1910 he began studying medicine at Munich University, but he soon switched to natural sciences, then engineering. He was introduced to avant-garde art when he visited his brother in Paris in 1913–14, and in 1915 he began to make geometrical constructions in Oslo, where they had taken refuge during the First World War. In 1917 the brothers returned to Russia and in 1920 they published their Realistic Manifesto, which set forth the basic principles of Constructivism (originally the manifesto was issued as a poster to accompany an open-air exhibition of their work in Moscow). They advocated a pure abstract sculpture, but official policy in the new Soviet Russia increasingly insisted on art being channelled into industrial design and other socially useful work (as exemplified by Tatlin). Gabo therefore left Russia in 1922 and spent the next ten years in Berlin, where he knew many of the leading artists of the day, particularly those connected with the Bauhaus. In 1932 he moved to Paris, where he was a leading member of the Abstraction-Création group, and in 1935 he settled in England, living first in London (where in 1937 he was co-editor of the Constructivist review Circle) and then from 1939 in Cornwall (see ST IVES SCHOOL).

In 1946 Gabo moved to the USA, settling at Middlebury, Connecticut, in 1953. He had a joint exhibition with Pevsner at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1948, and in the remaining three decades of his life he became a much honoured figure, receiving various awards and carrying out numerous public commissions in America and Europe. He often worked on themes over a long period; his Torsion Fountain outside St Thomas's Hospital in London, for example, was erected in 1975, but it is a development from models he was making in the 1920s. (Small models are a feature of his work; there are numerous examples in the Tate Gallery, London, which has an outstanding collection of Gabo material, presented by the artist himself.)

Gabo never trained as an artist, but came to art by way of his studies of engineering and science. He was one of the earliest to experiment with Kinetic sculpture (in 1919) and to make extensive and serious use of semi-transparent materials for a type of abstract sculpture that incorporates space as a positive element rather than displacing or enclosing it. Throughout his career he was an advocate of Constructivism not merely as an artistic movement but as the ideology of a way of life. In the catalogue of the exhibition ‘Naum Gabo: The Constructive Process’ (Tate Gallery, London, 1976) Teresa Newman writes: ‘Constructivism was and is “real” in the sense that it consists of three-dimensional, palpable images set in space … But constructive reality also has a philosophical dimension insofar as these sensuous images express a modern, life-affirming consciousness with materials and methods appropriate to our time. The constructive principle, in Gabo's words, “embraces the whole complex of human relationships to life: it is a mode of thinking, acting, perceiving and living.” Creation, for Gabo, is another word for life.’

Gabo, Naum ( Naum Neemia Pevsner) (b ?Klimovichi, Belarus, 5 Aug. 1890; d Waterbury, Conn., 23 Aug. 1977). Russian-born sculptor who became an American citizen in 1952, the most influential exponent of Constructivism. He was the younger brother of Antoine Pevsner, and adopted another family name, Gabo, in 1915 to avoid confusion between the two. After studying medicine, natural sciences, and engineering in Munich, he was introduced to avant-garde art when he visited his brother in Paris in 1913–14, and in 1915 he began to make geometrical constructions in Oslo, where they had taken refuge during the First World War. In 1917 the brothers returned to Russia and in 1920 they published their Realistic Manifesto, which set forth the basic principles of Constructivism. They advocated a pure abstract sculpture, but official policy in the new Soviet Russia increasingly insisted on art being channelled into industrial design and other socially useful work (as exemplified by Tatlin). Gabo therefore left Russia in 1922 and spent the next ten years in Berlin, where he knew many of the leading artists of the day, particularly those connected with the Bauhaus. In 1932 he moved to Paris, where he was a prominent member of the Abstraction-Création group, and in 1935 he settled in England, living first in London (where in 1937 he was co-editor of the Constructivist review Circle) and then from 1939 in Cornwall (see St Ives School).

In 1946 Gabo moved to the USA, settling at Middlebury, Connecticut, in 1953. In the last three decades of his life he received many prestigious awards and carried out numerous public commissions in Europe and America. He often worked on themes over a long period; his Torsion Fountain outside St Thomas's Hospital in London, for example, was erected in 1975, but is a development from models he was making in the 1920s. (Small models are a feature of his work; there are numerous examples in Tate Modern, which has an outstanding collection of Gabo material.)

Gabo never trained as an artist, but came to art by way of his studies of engineering and physical science, and was one of the first artists to embody in his work modern concepts of the nature of space. He was one of the earliest to experiment with Kinetic sculpture and to make extensive use of semi-transparent materials for a type of abstract sculpture that incorporates space as a positive element rather than displacing or enclosing it. He was throughout his life an advocate of the Constructivist idea not merely as an artistic movement but as the ideology of a way of life.

Gabo, Naum ( Naum Neemia Pevsner) (1890–1977). Russian-born sculptor who became an American citizen in 1952, the most influential exponent of Constructivism. He was the younger brother of Antoine Pevsner, and adopted another family name, Gabo, in 1915 to avoid confusion between the two. After studying medicine, natural sciences, and engineering in Munich, he was introduced to avant-garde art when he visited his brother in Paris in 1913–14, and in 1915 he began to make geometrical constructions in Oslo, where they had taken refuge during the First World War. In 1917 the brothers returned to Russia and in 1920 they published their Realistic Manifesto, which set forth the basic principles of Constructivism. They advocated a pure abstract sculpture, but official policy in the new Soviet Russia increasingly insisted on art being channelled into industrial design and other socially useful work (as exemplified by Tatlin). Gabo therefore left Russia in 1922 and spent the next ten years in Berlin, where he knew many of the leading artists of the day, particularly those connected with the Bauhaus. In 1932 he moved to Paris, where he was a prominent member of the Abstraction-Création group, and in 1935 he settled in England, living first in London (where in 1937 he was co-editor of the Constructivist review Circle) and then from 1939 in Cornwall (see St ives School). In 1946 Gabo moved to the USA, settling at Middlebury, Connecticut, in 1953. In the last three decades of his life he received many prestigious awards and carried out numerous public commissions in Europe and America. He often worked on themes over a long period; his Torsion Fountain outside St Thomas's Hospital in London, for example, was erected in 1975, but is a development from models he was making in the 1920s. (Small models are a feature of his work; there are numerous examples in Tate Modern, which has an outstanding collection of Gabo material.)

Gabo never trained as an artist, but came to art by way of his studies of engineering and physical science, and was one of the first artists to embody in his work modern concepts of the nature of space. He was one of the earliest to experiment with Kinetic sculpture and to make extensive use of semi-transparent materials for a type of abstract sculpture that incorporates space as a positive element rather than displacing or enclosing it. He was throughout his life an advocate of the Constructivist idea not merely as an artistic movement but as the ideology of a way of life.

Naum Gabo , 1890-1977, Russian sculptor, architect, theorist, and teacher, brother of Antoine Pevsner . Gabo lived in Munich and Norway until the end of the revolution, when he returned to Russia. With Pevsner he wrote the Realist Manifesto (1920), which proposed that new concepts of time and space be incorporated into works of art and that dynamic form replace static mass. His sculptural experiments with constructivism , a movement he helped found, were often transparent, geometrical abstractions composed of plastics and other materials. Gabo's art conflicted with Soviet art directives. In 1922 he left Moscow for Berlin where he taught at the Bauhaus , later moving to England and then to the United States. In 1957 he executed a huge public monument in Rotterdam.

Bibliography: See his Gabo (1957) and Of Divers Arts (1962); study by R. Olson and A. Chanin (1948).

Gabo, Naum (1890–1977) US sculptor and architect, b. Russia as Naum Pevsner. A founder of constructivism, he published the Realist Manifesto (1920) with his brother Antoine Pevsner.