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. After school in Kursk, Gabo entered Munich University in 1910, first studying medicine, then the natural sciences, and attended art history lectures by Heinrich Wlfflin. As a young man in post-Revolutionary Russia, Gabo was closely associated with Constructivism, It was here he created his so-called Constructed Heads, signing them as Gabo rather than Pevsner to distinguish himself from his artist brother Antoine, who had joined Naum and Alexei in Norway, and to indicate a new, revolutionary direction in his art. Linear Construction in Space No. As a young man in post-Revolutionary Russia, Gabo was closely associated with Constructivism, which sought to blur the boundaries between creative and functional processes. Presented by the artist 1977 Column is a representative piece of constructivist sculpture. It should be noticed that the work was conceived in the winter of 1920-1, as a tiny model, and executed in the winter of 1922-3 in its big form'. For Gabo, sculptures like Column, which gave a certain impression of weightlessness, "appeal[ed] to minds and feelings more than crude physical senses". Gabo grew up in a Jewish family of six children in the provincial Russian town of Bryansk, where his father owned a factory. Naum Gabo, ein russischer Konstruktivist in Berlin 1922-1932: Skulpturen, Zeichnungen und Architekturentwrfe, Dokumente und Archive aus der Sammlung der Berlinischen Galerie, ed. The transparent planes build upon and reveal the sections below, suggesting emergence and growth. Moving away from the geometrical precision typical of 1920s modernist architecture - the work of Le Corbusier, for example - Gabo's work predicts later developments in the style, such as the curvilinear forms of Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer's designs for Braslia in the 1950s. Plastic and nylon threads - Collection of the Tate, United Kingdom. By the time he reached England in 1936 Gabo was an internationally recognized artist, and he was welcomed warmly by British artists and critics such as Barbara Hepworth, her future husband Ben Nicholson, and Herbert Read, many of whom Gabo had met in Paris through Abstraction-Cration. To escape the rise of the Nazis in Germany the pair stayed in Paris in 193235 as members of the Abstraction-Creation group with Piet Mondrian. base: 0.3 cm (1/8 in.) His use of empty space as a substantive element of sculpture is echoed in later works by British artists such as Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore. This subtle interplay is complemented by the interplay of shadows on the pool of water below. Jrn Merkert, Berlin: Berlinische Galerie, 1989, 158 pp. He made the first of a series of small, three-dimensional models, using glass, metal and new plastics the following year but owing to the size and nature of the work, and the unstable nature of new plastics, he was unable to One of Gabo's most important discoveries was that empty space could be used as an element of sculpture. Gabo made preliminary designs for Column in 1921 with the idea of making it into a large public sculpture, towering over the hills near Moscow. Surrounded by fjords, and mountains where they would ski on weekends, the brothers were funded by their father, thereby avoiding both paid work and the horrors of war in Europe. By incorporating moving parts into his sculpture, or static elements which strongly suggested movement, Gabo's work stands at the forefront of a whole artistic tradition, Kinetic Art, which uses art to represent time as well as space. .1927-9. In 1952, despite finishing ahead of 3,500 other artists, he was disappointed to be awarded second prize in the Institute of Contemporary Art's Unknown Political Prisoner international sculpture competition, his abstract monument design having been perceived to lack emotion. His work combined geometric abstraction with a dynamic organization of form in small reliefs and constructions, monumental public sculpture and pioneering kinetic works that assimilated new materials such as nylon, wire, lucite and semi-transparent materials, glass and metal. Lit: Naum Gabo Model for Column 19201 The Work of Naum Gabo Nina & Graham Williams / Tate, London 2023 License this image Not on display Artist Naum Gabo 18901977 Medium Plastic (cellulose nitrate) Dimensions Object: 143 95 95 mm Collection Tate Acquisition Presented by the artist 1977 Reference T02167 Display caption Catalogue entry Already, Bolshevik Russia was becoming hostile to artists of the avant-garde, as the grim paradigm of Socialist Realism appeared on the horizon. The Palace of the Soviets, according to the brief, was to consist of two auditoria holding 20,000 people in total, and would serve as a venue for mass meetings, demonstrations, and cultural events. Away from war-torn Europe, Gabo found artistic freedom and financial security. The abstract compositional vocabulary of works like Column was not abstract for the sake of it, but was intended as a means of defining the new ways in which Soviet citizens might feel, perceive, and act within the world around them. Gabos acute awareness of turmoil sought out solace in the peacefulness that was so fully realized in his ideal art forms. Despite this, the European art market was struggling and Europe seemed increasingly unsafe. 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". Artwork page for Spiral Theme, Naum Gabo, 1941 When Spiral Theme was shown in wartime London, it was greeted with popular acclaim. At the outbreak of World War II he followed his friends Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson to St Ives in Cornwall, where he stayed initially with the art critic Adrian Stokes and his wife Margaret Mellis. Cellulose, acetate and Perspex - Collection of the Tate, United Kingdom. Gabo was offered the studio behind Peter Lanyon's red house whilst the younger artist was away fighting. Whereas the Tate's model has a red base, the bases of the others are either black or (in the case of Nina Gabo's version) stainless steel. The critic Herbert Read hailed it as 'the highest point ever reached by the aesthetic intuition of man'. Gabo's influence on modern art has been profound, though it is sometimes underemphasized in art history books. Then, many years later, the discovery that suitable glass was now made by Pilkington's made it practicable for him in 1975 to construct two enlarged versions 194cm high in stainless steel, glass and perspex, including one for the Louisiana Museum at Humlebaek in Denmark. Hammer, Martin and Naum Gabo, Christina Lodder. Portland Stone - Collection of the Tate, United Kingdom. Moreover, in rejecting the notion of sculpture as weighty, monolithic and solid, and in emphasizing that space is no less tangible than solid matter, this delicate construction predicts a number of elementary paradigms in modern sculpture more generally. He later recalled that though such works had a profound effect on him, they "were all dead", and "it was nature that impressed him, not art". Despite severe economic hardship, Gabo threw himself into the cause over the next five years, later recalling that "at the beginning we were all working for the Government". His first print was a wood engraving in a section of wood taken from a piece of furniture and printed onto a piece of toilet paper. Naum gabo artwork Rating: 4,3/10 1459 reviews. Constructed Head No. Does this text contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? The introduction of a liquid element into the body of the sculpture is highly significant, with the surfaces formed by the jets of water replacing the string meshwork of the Linear Constructions in creating the illusion of solid matter. They moved there shortly before their planned journey to North America, but in September 1939, the passenger ferry the Athena was torpedoed by German submarines - the first such casualty of World War Two - and they were forced to cancel their trip. Imaginative as Gabo was, his practicality lent itself to the conception and production of his works. By Naum Gabo (Author), Christina Lodder (Editor), Martin Hammer (Editor), By Martin Hammer, Naum Gabo, Christina Lodder, By Naum Gabo, Steven A. Nash, Jrn Merkert, Colin C. Sanderson, By Anne Cleveland / An illusion of movement is created as the smooth, wave-like shapes seem to advance and recede. de la Croix, Horst and Richard G. Tansey, Gabo, Naum. The dynamic arrangement of string-work and Perspex creates three-dimensional light patterns which transform as the viewer moves around the object. Though he was to live in self-imposed exile in Europe and America for most of his adult life, he always lamented his distance from Russia, where he claimed his "consciousness was moulded". Finished in St. Ives, it is one of a number of stone works from this period which represent Gabo's first experiments with the time-honored technique of direct carving. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Constructed Head No. In the 1960s a project for enlarging Column had floundered in part, precisely because of his desire to ensure aesthetic quality.21 In 1971, however, Gabo had enough faith in Knud Jensen, director of the Louisiana Museum, to allow him to oversee the construction of a pair of large Columns in Denmark, using Gabos model, his specifications, and incorporating transparent In essence, these pieces reflect a shift in Gabo's way of thinking about the depiction of empty space as volume, something he now felt was best achieved with spherical rather than angular forms. The work is composed of six meditations, in which Descartes attempts to establish a firm Foregoing the superficial abstractions of the Cubists and Futurists, and rejecting propagandist realism, the new art would use sculptural forms to present "depth" (empty space) rather than mass, and generate "kinetic rhythms" which would represent the element of time as well as the element of space. His maquettes for that project, and the earliest version of Linear Construction 2, date from 1949; the version in the Tate Collection was specially constructed and donated by the artist in 1969, in memory of his friend Herbert Read (it was rebuilt in 1971). Tate Papers / This show featured over 700 works, including paintings, sculptures, set designs, and architectural models, and was a significant event in the reception of Constructivism in Northern Europe. His ingenious extension of Cubist painting techniques into the realm of sculpture predicated much abstract sculpture of the following decades. Perspex, wood, metal, and glass - The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, New York. To find any part of machinery was next to impossible". Naum Gabo, KBE born Naum Neemia Pevsner (5 August[O.S. Vassar Miscellany News / Naum, Miriam, and Nina lived in the USA for 30 years, settling briefly in New York, then moving to Woodbury, Connecticut in 1947. A model for the column 104cm high in plastic, wood and metal which belonged to the Addison Gallery of American Art at Andover, Massachusetts, from 1949 to 1952 (until exchanged for another work), and which is now in the Guggenheim Museum, New York. 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. 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. It was first exhibited in 1920, to great critical acclaim. Retrieved March 23, 2018. Many other migr artists were congregating in England at this time, including old friends: Oskar Kokoschka, Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, and Piet Mondrian. He famously explored the former idea in his Linear Construction works (1942-1971)used nylon filament to create voids or interior spaces as "concrete" as the elements of solid massand the latter in his pioneering work, Kinetic Sculpture (Standing Waves) (1920), often considered the first kinetic work of art. He was also finally able to achieve a long-held ambition of creating large-scale, public works, receiving commissions from the Rockefeller Centre in New York in 1949, and the Baltimore Museum of Art in 1950 - though only the latter construction was realized, a hanging sculpture inspired by Alexander Calder (with whom Gabo would exhibit in 1953 at the Wadsworth Athaeneum) and Rodchenko. As a student of engineering and architecture, he emulated and demonstrated cutting-edge techniques from those fields in his sculptural constructions, and designed complex architectural plans himself. By using nylon, a new, synthetic material whose elasticity, smoothness and translucency defined the feel of this sculpture, Gabo again demonstrated his engagement his interest in using new, man-made compositional materials. Gabo exhibited, alongside many of his compatriates, in the ground-breaking Abstract and Concrete show at London's Lefvre Gallery in 1936, and in 1937 he co-edited the hugely influential compendium of Constructivist art Circle, with Ben Nicholson and the architect Leslie Martin. Works such as Column were in most cases only definitively realized after Gabo left Russia in 1922 for Germany: where, amongst other things, he had easier access to materials. Gabo's migr status didn't help matters. The transparent planes build upon and reveal the sections below, suggesting emergence and growth. October 30, 1997, By Christina Lodder / Content compiled and written by The Art Story Contributors, Edited and revised, with Summary and Accomplishments added by Greg Thomas, Kinetic Construction (Standing Wave) (1920), Submitted Design for Palace of Soviets: Plan of Main Hall and Section (1931), Linear Construction in Space No. He lacked confidence in his art, and there were tensions and jealousy between him and his brother. The fact that it was intended as a model for a building exemplifies the Constructivist concern with giving art a functional purpose. Exh: Gabo began printmaking in 1950, when he was persuaded to try out the medium by William Ivins, a former curator of prints at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, New York. As a young man in post-Revolutionary Russia, Gabo was closely associated with Constructivism, Described by siblings as a "mischievous and daredevil character", he soon looked for radical ways of expressing himself. Column is a freestanding vertical tower made from two transparent, interlocking, rectangular planes that rise from a circular base of dark steel. This was not a happy period for him, politically or personally. Spiral Theme also helped to ensure Gabo's reputation within Britain. At the same time, the dynamic curves of the design represented a departure from the geometric aesthetics of the "International Style" then prevalent in modernist architecture, which Gabo had studied, and emulated in previous architectural sketches. 20 separate versions exist of this sculpture, strung together in complex and delicate configurations, light catching the nylon filament to emphasize what Gabo called a "sense of immateriality". Norway was quiet and tranquil. "Standing Wave" is a physician's term, used to describe exactly the kind of static-seeming patterns of movement, generated by the passage of energy through certain structures, which the sculpture creates. 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