Kinetic Construction was Gabo's first motorized sculpture, demonstrating his pioneering integration of engineering techniques and scientific principles into art. 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. [2][3][5] After working on a smaller scale in England during the war years (1936-1946), Gabo moved to the United States, where he received several public sculpture commissions, only some of which he completed. Naum GaboConstructivism, Kinetic Art, Bauhaus, Op Art, Biomorphism, Direct CarvingBorn: 5 August 1890, Bryansk, RussiaNationality: Russian AmericanDied: 23 August 1977, Connecticut, USA, Gabo was a sculptor, theorist, and a key figure in Russias post-Revolution avant-garde and development of twentieth-century sculpture. Shortly afterwards, having been offered 25 to make a small construction as a present for a friend, Gabo produced the first version of Spiral Theme, an important work which would take him in a new artistic direction, and lead to a renewed engagement with family and friends. Spiral Theme also helped to ensure Gabo's reputation within Britain. Ultimately, construction on the Palace of the Soviets was aborted by the German invasion of Russia in 1941, and never resumed. 24 July]1890 23 August 1977) (Hebrew: ), was an influential sculptor, theorist, and key figure in Russia's post-Revolution avant-garde and the subsequent development of twentieth-century sculpture. 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 died in Waterbury, Connecticut, in 1977. 1928, rebuilt 1938. He and his brother Antoine Pevsner, returned to Russia at the time of the Revolution. Gabo's health began to fail in his 80s, and he died in 1977 in Waterbury, Connecticut, following a long illness. 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'. Gabo's migr status didn't help matters. He began making constructed sculpture in Norway in 1915, when he took the name of Gabo. 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. Inspired by his war-time associates Moore and Hepworth, Gabo wanted to see if he could generate the sense of kinetic rhythm which his work relied on whilst utilizing a more conventional approach to sculpture. ", "In the squares and on the streets we are placing our work Art should attend us everywhere that life flows and acts.at the bench, at the table, at work, at rest, at play in order that the flame to live should not extinguish in mankind. T02167 is presumably the tiny model referred to. 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. Column 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. Gabo saw the Revolution as the beginning of a renewal of human values. In retrospect, works like Column set the tone for aspects of Gabo's work throughout the rest of his career. These also suggest some accessible resources for further research, especially ones that can be found and purchased via the internet. 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. 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. Gabo was educated in Russia and Munich before emigrating to Scandinavia in 1915. In 1950, Gabo began wood-block printing, an activity which would occupy him until his death, generating a significant body of work. The page you're looking for is not available. Gabo was born in 1890 in Russia. Gabo grew up in a Jewish family of six children in the provincial Russian town of Bryansk, where his father owned a factory. Gabo's older brother was the fellow Constructivist artist Antoine Pevsner, leading Gabo to change his name to avoid any confusion. An illusion of movement is created as the smooth, wave-like shapes seem to advance and recede. Subtitled International Survey of Constructivist Art, Circle featured important critical statements as well as reproductions of key artworks, and reflected a cultural optimism that the impending conflict in Europe had yet to diminish. Gabo had lived through a revolution and two world wars; he was also Jewish and had fled Nazi Germany. The designs also bespoke Gabo's ongoing commitment, in spite of his awareness of the realities of Stalinism, to the Soviet project of constructing a new social realm. Study with Quizlet and memorize flashcards containing terms like Naum Gabo, Column, Vladimir Tatlin, Monument to the Third International, Le Corbusier, Palace of the Soviets and more. Naum Gabo (born Naum Neemia Pevsner; ) was a Russian sculptor in the Constructivism movement and a pioneer of Kinetic Art. 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. ", "I have chosen the absoluteness and exactitude of my lines, shapes and forms, in the conviction they are the most immediate medium for my communication to others of the rhythms and states of mind I would wish the world to be in. In a highly memorable and traumatic encounter, he witnessed the brutality of the Cossacks against a protester, later recalling: "I was 15 years old and that day and that night I became a revolutionary". One of Gabo's most important discoveries was that empty space could be used as an element of sculpture. Wassily Kandinsky's revelatory book on abstract art, Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1912), was gaining currency at this time, and fomented Gabo's interest in representing the structures and forces of nature. By the early 1930s, the political climate in Germany had grown increasingly nationalistic, anti-semitic, and toxic. .1927-9. Cellulose, acetate and Perspex - Collection of the Tate, United Kingdom. Expressing a new, intellectually scrupulous approach to the fascination with movement which characterized avant-garde art of this period, Gabo created a work which stands at the forefront of Kinetic Art. 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. We would like to hear from you. This was not a happy period for him, politically or personally. 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. In 1912, Gabo transferred to an engineering school in Munich, where he discovered abstract art and met the noted painter Wassily Kandinsky. Naum Gabo biography. Gabo was influenced by scientists who were developing new ways of understanding space, time and matter. Gabo's plans, on which he worked feverishly for several months, consisted of two vast auditoria constructed from reinforced concrete, protruding from a towering central service block. His ingenious extension of Cubist painting techniques into the realm of sculpture predicated much abstract sculpture of the following decades. It is one of a number of works signifying Gabos departure from his early figurative style towards pure abstraction. It was in his sculpture that he evaded all the chaos, violence, and despair he had survived. 1928, rebuilt 1938 Perspex and plastic on aluminum base 27 11.3 10 cm (10 5/8 4 7/16 3 "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. It was first exhibited in 1920, to great critical acclaim. The Realistic Manifesto is a key text of Constructivism.Written by Naum Gabo and cosigned by his brother, Antoine Pevsner, the Manifesto laid out their theories of artistic expression in the form of five "fundamental principles" of their constructivist practice. [8], Gabo pioneered the use of plastics, such as cellulose acetate, in his sculptures. Artwork page for 'Model for 'Column'', Naum Gabo, 1920-1 Many of Gabo's sculptures first appeared as tiny models. "Inspiration: a functional approach to creative practice", "V&A conservators race to preserve art and design classics in plastic", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Naum_Gabo&oldid=1137469999, Honorary Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire, Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 4 February 2023, at 20:37. Then, in the summer of 1941, art patron Margaret Gardiner offered Gabo 25 to produce a work for her partner, the scientist John Bernal. It was in Munich that Gabo attended the lectures of art historian Heinrich Wlfflin and gained knowledge of the ideas of Einstein and his fellow innovators of scientific theory, as well as the philosopher Henri Bergson. In 1920 Gabo wrote the Realistic Manifesto, an expression of the aims and . A larger version was created for the exhibition New Movements in Art: Contemporary Work in England, held at the London Museum in Spring 1942. The central abstract form completes a full rotation every 10 minutes, as plumes of water emerge with varying pressure from 140 holes on the steel wings of the fountain, assuming the form of curved planes. He studied medicine, then physics and engineering in Munich. But this piece has its origins in the heady post-revolutionary atmosphere of early 1920s Moscow, where sculptors were attempting to apply the abstract visual vocabulary of the Suprematist painter Kazimir Malevich to three-dimensional art. 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. Key to this work, considered by many critics to be amongst Gabo's finest, are the harmonious, organic rhythms generated by the interplay of curved lines, and the complex patterns of reflected light which shift and reconfigure as the viewer moves around the sculpture. In Naum Gabo's Realistic Manifesto, written in Moscow in 1920, the sculptor declared his allegiance to a vibrant generation of Russian creatives who called themselves Constructivists. naum gabo column 27 Feb Posted at 01:41h in ozzie smith mma gypsy by May 7, 1938, By Martin Kemp / 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 . Sure enough, the piece generates a marked contrast between the rough texture of the untreated stone and the two smooth, shelf-like planes chiselled into it, which snake horizontally around it, interconnecting when viewed from above. His command of several languages contributed greatly to his mobility during his career. Russian-American Sculptor, Designer, and Architect. A third, Natan (later Antoine), four years older than Naum, became a successful artist, and was a significant influence on his younger brother, whose artistic curiosity was beginning to emerge through a love of poetry and early attempts at sculpture, informed by the Tsarist art that dominated his cultural landscape. 27 11.3 10 cm (10 5/8 4 7/16 3 15/16 in.) Gabo was influenced by scientists who were developing new ways of understanding space, time and matter. Gabo had also begun after his arrival in England to experiment with new materials such as Perspex and stone, influenced by the Direct Carving of Moore and Hepworth, though materials were increasingly hard to source, and sales were poor. 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. Column is a freestanding vertical tower made from two transparent, interlocking, rectangular planes that rise from a circular base of dark steel. But they are really significant in epitomizing a moment in the history of modern art when it seemed that avant-garde painters, sculptors and architects might have a role to play in the construction of a new society. Linear Construction in Space No. One of four models made in anticipation of two larger sculptures, Spiral Theme is a curvilinear, transparent construction with a central vertical element, reminiscent of the shells Gabo found on the beaches around St. Ives, his home from 1939 to 1946. 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. He was a fluent in German, French, and English, in addition to his native Russian. Travelling back from Siberia to Bryansk on the two-day train journey, he claimed he "had awoken to life", and within a year he was working for an illegal group distributing literature for the Social Democratic Labour Party amongst workers. In his work, Gabo used time and space as construction elements and in them solid matter unfolds and becomes beautifully surreal and otherworldly. 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. The piece now at Yale was bought by the Socit Anonyme from the artist. Moscow was caught up in a tumultuous mix of revolutionary fervor and the strife of civil war. Two preoccupations, unique to Gabo, were his interest in representing negative space"released from any closed volume" or massand time. Gabo's increasing concern, from the late 1930s, with the aesthetic aspect of his work at the expense of the industrial can be seen in Model for 'Construction in Space "Crystal"'. To a sibling he wrote: "I'm very sorry I've had to absorb such a mass of interesting impressions alone". He devised systems of construction which were not only used for his elegantly elaborate sculptures but were viable for architecture as well. As in thought, so in feeling, a vague communication is no communication at all," Gabo once remarked. As in the earlier Linear Construction, space is contained without being filled, a new and elegant way of emphasizing volume independently of mass. Naum Gabo Sculpture Donated To Scottish National Gallery . Naum, Miriam, and Nina lived in the USA for 30 years, settling briefly in New York, then moving to Woodbury, Connecticut in 1947. Gabo was associated briefly with the Bauhaus School - then the hub of European Constructivism - lecturing and writing for their journal. 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. Nature / Naum Gabo's structurally complex, mesmeric abstract sculptures cast a shadow over the whole of 20th-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. During his travels to Paris in 1912-13, Gabo had seen Picasso and Braque's paintings - the artists were still in their so-called Analytical Cubis" phase - and in Norway he began to apply similar concepts of breaking up the picture plane into three-dimensional work - consider Picasso's Woman with Pears (1909), for example. Model of the Column (formerly Model for Glass Fountain) ca. At the same time, Gabo's interest in transparent materials like glass and plastic - which was profound and enduring from this period onwards - reflected his ongoing fascination with depicting volume independently of mass. Norway was quiet and tranquil. Page not found. Perspex, wood, metal, and glass - The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, New York. Naum Gabo: The Constructive Process, Tate Gallery, November 1976-January 1977 (17, repr.) The use of space in the work, in this case the central void enclosed by the surrounding Perspex, becomes a newly prominent feature. As a Russian, he was under constant suspicion, and had to report regularly to the police until 1941, when Britain and Russia became uneasy allies. This document, written by Gabo, made history, galvanizing the spirit of rebellion and the urgent desire for change amongst a huge swath of Russian culture at this time. Characteristically, though, he disagreed with some of their functionalist principles. While in Cornwall he continued to work, albeit on a smaller scale. A sojourn in Paris from 1911 to 1914 introduced him to cubism and futurism, two radical new approaches to making art. This can be the poets own work, a specific poet, or a combination of many poets. 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. Despite this, the European art market was struggling and Europe seemed increasingly unsafe. The construction was therefore intended precisely to demonstate a scientific principle, and as a more sophisticated, scientifically accurate rendering of motion than the Futurists had managed with their rather excitable paintings. Does this text contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? de la Croix, Horst and Richard G. Tansey, Gabo, Naum. View all posts by JezzieG, Your email address will not be published. (London 1957), note between pls.25 and 26, and p.183. 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