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. Visit the Frank Lloyd Wrightdesigned Guggenheim Museum in NYC, part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In a country starved of resources, Gabo had to rely on a friend who worked for Imperial Chemicals to provide these materials. The model, like the later piece, is made of glass, plastic, and metal. At the same time, the sculpture spoke to a spiritual concern which had been present in his aesthetic as far back as The Realistic Manifesto (1920), but which was now becoming more pronounced, with the central, framed space evoking ideas of the infinite and the cosmic. A sojourn in Paris from 1911 to 1914 introduced him to cubism and futurism, two radical new approaches to making art. About this artwork. Gabo described himself as "making images to communicate my feelings of the world." See the renowned permanent collection and special exhibitions. 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. The exactness of form leads the viewer to imagine journeying into, through, over and around his sculptures. Born in Russia, he had lived in Germany, Norway, France and then from 1936 to 1946 in England. Gabo also became alienated quite quickly from the St. Ives School, shutting himself away in his studio for days, and arguing with Nicholson and Hepworth after he accused the latter of stealing his ideas. Artwork page for Spiral Theme, Naum Gabo, 1941 When Spiral Theme was shown in wartime London, it was greeted with popular acclaim. This meant he could incorporate empty spaces into his sculptures. As in the earlier Linear Construction, space is contained without being filled, a new and elegant way of emphasizing volume independently of mass. 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. 'From the very beginning of the Constructive Movement it was clear to me that a constructed, , Tate Gallery and Sotheby Parke-Bernet, London 1981, pp.236-7, reproduced p.236, Model for Construction in Space Two Cones, Model for Construction in Space Crystal. His work combined geometric abstraction with a dynamic organization of form in small reliefs and constructions, monumental public sculpture and pioneering kinetic works Such efforts were galvanized by the formalisation of ideas associated with Constructivism, partly through the creation of the First Working Group of Constructivists in Moscow in March 1921. Does this text contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? Artwork page for Spiral Theme, Naum Gabo, 1941 When Spiral Theme was shown in wartime London, it was greeted with popular acclaim. Since the 1950s, Gabo had been reworking many of his sculptural designs as public installations - including a 25-metre sculpture for the Bijenkorf Department Store in Rotterdam, completed in 1957 - and this activity gathered pace towards the end of his life. After making the large version, Gabo also made three models in plastic about 25.4cm high which belong to Sir Leslie Martin, Cambridge, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, and Nina S. Gabo, London. It was first exhibited in 1920, to great critical acclaim. He would later remark that "if anyone made me a Jew, it was Hitler". .1927-9. Gabo's engineering training was key to the development of his sculptural work that often used machined elements. Kinetic Stone Carving is one of Gabo's more anomalous and beautiful works, which would probably not have been created without the creative stimulus of his friendship with British abstract sculptors such as Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth during the late 1930s and 1940s. Kinetic Stone Carving represents a major shift from the Constructivist process of assembling individual elements which Gabo had helped to define earlier in the century. Constructing his sculptures from sets of interlocking components rather than carving or moulding them from inert mass allowed him to incorporate space into his work more easily. In 1931, towards the end of his decade in Germany, Gabo produced architectural plans for a government competition to create a new building in Moscow, commemorating the founding of the USSR. Constructed Head No. Gabo worked through various movements and ideas, eventually settling in the United States after the Second World War. Tate Papers / [1] 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. Using his engineering training, Gabo rejected traditional sculptural techniques of carving and moulding, instead using processes closer to architectural construction, building up his sculptures from interlocking components. Gabo grew up in a Jewish family of six children in the provincial Russian town of Bryansk, where his father owned a factory. Retrieved March 23, 2018. The "Project for a Radio Station" which I did in the winter of 1919-20, and Tatlin's model for the 3rd International done a year earlier, indicate the trend of our thoughts at that time. His older brother was fellow Constructivist artist Antoine Pevsner; Gabo changed his name to avoid confusion with him. 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. This move gave Naum the excuse he had craved to abandon his studies and concentrate on his art. Gift of Collection Socit Anonyme 1941.474 Status: By appointment, Wurtele Study Center Culture: "[6] Gabo held a utopian belief in the power of sculpturespecifically abstract, Constructivist sculptureto express human experience and spirituality in tune with modernity, social progress, and advances in science and technology. He sometimes even used motors to move the sculpture. An elegant public artwork constructed from curved, stainless steel plates, designed for installation in a pool of water, Revolving Torsion represents the culmination of principles of Kinetic art first explored over 50 years earlier by Gabo's Kinetic Construction. In Germany Gabo came into contact with the artists of the de Stijl and taught at the Bauhaus in 1928. Gabo found his time in Cornwall emotionally challenging, and he experienced severe creative block, potentially a psychological effect of the war: he was following developments in Europe with great anxiety, worried for his family, with whom he had all but lost touch. 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. The use of space in the work, in this case the central void enclosed by the surrounding Perspex, becomes a newly prominent feature. 1928, rebuilt 1938 Perspex and plastic on aluminum base 27 11.3 10 cm (10 5/8 4 7/16 3 15/16 in.) They were often projects for monumental public schemes, rarely achieved, in which sculpture and architecture came together. In it, he sought to move past Cubism and Futurism, renouncing what he saw as the static, decorative use of color, line, volume and solid mass in favor of a new element he called "the kinetic rhythms () the basic forms of our perception of real time." 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. Lost in the Detail: Naum Gabo's Monoprints. Vassar Miscellany News / 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. The full text of the article is here , Two Cubes (Demonstrating the Stereometric Method), Model for 'Construction in Space, Suspended', Construction in Space with Crystalline Centre, Model for 'Construction in Space 'Two Cones''. With the onset of World War I, Gabo and his younger brother Alexei, also based in Germany, fled via Copenhagen to neutral Norway, partly to avoid serving in the Imperial Army, and partly because, as Russian nationals, they were suddenly pariahs in their new home. As the string nears the central core, it is wound with increasing density, creating a mesmeric gradation of depth. 2 is one of a set of early figurative works by Gabo now seen to have revolutionized sculpture. A reverse structure, and a kind of companion piece, to Linear Construction in Space No. Gabos acute awareness of turmoil sought out solace in the peacefulness that was so fully realized in his ideal art forms. In particular, the piece seems to enact the idea that "kinetic rhythms" should be "affirmed as the basic forms of our perception of real time", associable both with Einsteinian space-time relativity and (probably more directly) Henri Bergson's conception of time as non-linear. It is March 1950 and Naum Gabo (1890-1977), the world-famous sculptor, is stabbing a mahogany table leg. (German) Naum Gabo, 1890-1977, Annely Juda Fine Art, London, 1990. 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. As in thought, so in feeling, a vague communication is no communication at all," Gabo once remarked. But while his artist comrade Vladimir Tatlin created raw, crudely assembled reliefs, Gabo's works were delicate and precise; at the same time, they had a distinct mechanical aesthetic, indicating his enduring fascination with science and engineering. 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. Naum Gabo's structurally complex, mesmeric abstract sculptures cast a shadow over the whole of 20 th-century art, while his life was that of the quintessential creative migr, as he moved from country to country seeking new contexts for his work, in flight from war and repression. Away from war-torn Europe, Gabo found artistic freedom and financial security. Responding to the scientific and political revolutions of his age, Gabo led an eventful and peripatetic life, moving to Berlin, Paris, Oslo, Moscow, London, and finally the United States, and within the circles of the major avant-garde movements of the day, including Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism, the Bauhaus, de Stijl and the Abstraction-Cration group. Naum Gabo Column 1921 - 1922/75 The Work of Naum Gabo Nina and Graham Williams Biography Born 1890 Died 1977 Nationalities Russian American Birth place Klimovichi Death place Waterbury Gabo was born in Russia and trained in Munich as a scientist and engineer. It was in his sculpture that he evaded all the chaos, violence, and despair he had survived. Column is a representative piece of constructivist sculpture. Lost in the Detail: Naum Gabo's Monoprints. Gabo saw the Revolution as the beginning of a renewal of human values. 2 (1949), "We renounce in sculpture, the mass as a sculptural element [.] We renounce the thousand-year-old delusion in art that held the static rhythms as the only elements of the plastic and pictorial arts. 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 In breaking down the boundaries between sculpture and architecture, integrating engineering techniques and scientific concepts into his creative process, and using industrial materials, he made a vital contribution to the development of Constructivist aesthetics. 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