Constructing Modernity the Art and Career of Naum Gabo

Gabo in his studio in Berlin in the mid-1920s.
Born	August 5, 1890(1890-08-05) Bryansk, Russian Empire
Died	Baronial 23, 1977(1977-08-23) (aged 87) Waterbury, Connecticut, United States
Collections	Berlin [1], Tate, Cambridge, Yale, Guggenheim, MoMA, DMA, NGS, Beinecke

Naum Gabo (born Naum Neemia Pevsner; נחום נחמיה פבזנר) was a Russian sculptor in the Constructivism movement and a pioneer of Kinetic Art.

Contents

• 1 Biography
• 2 Works
  • 2.1 Constructed Head
  • two.two other
• three Publications
• iv Catalogues
• v Literature
• vi Links

Biography [edit]

Born Naum Neemia Pevsner in 1890. Grew up in a Jewish family of half dozen children in the provincial Russian town of Bryansk, where his male parent endemic a manufactory. His older brother was fellow Constructivist artist Antoine Pevsner. Gabo was a fluent speaker and writer of German language, French, and English in addition to his native Russian. His command of several languages contributed greatly to his mobility during his career.

After schoolhouse in Kursk, Gabo entered Munich University in 1910, first studying medicine, then the natural sciences, and attended art history lectures by Heinrich Wölfflin; gained knowledge of the ideas of Einstein and his fellow innovators of scientific theory, as well as Henri Bergson. 1912 transferred to an engineering science school in Munich where he discovered abstruse art past reading Kandinsky'southward 'Concerning the Spiritual in Art'; 1913-fourteen joined his brother Antoine (who by then was an established painter) in Paris. Gabo'south applied science training was primal to the development of his sculptural work that oftentimes used machined elements. During this time he won acclamations by many critics and awards like the Logan Medal of the arts.

1914 moved first to Copenhagen then Oslo with his older brother Alexei; 1915 fabricated his first constructions under the proper name Naum Gabo (changed his name to avoid confusion with Antoine); figurative objects in cardboard or woods such equally the Head No.two which was formal experiment in depicting the volume of a figure without carrying its mass. 1917 moved back to Russia to go involved in politics and art, spending five years in Moscow with Antoine.

Contributed to the Agit-prop open air exhibitions and taught at VKhUTEMAS the College Art and Technical Workshop, with Tatlin, Kandinsky and Rodchenko. During this catamenia the reliefs and construction became more geometric and Gabo began to experiment with kinetic sculpture though the bulk of the work was lost or destroyed. Gabo's designs had become increasingly awe-inspiring merely in that location was little opportunity to employ them commenting "Information technology was the height of civil war, hunger and disorder in Russian federation. To find any function of machinery [..] was next to impossible". Baronial 1920 wrote and issued jointly with Antoine a Realistic Manifesto proclaiming the tenets of pure Constructivism - the first time that the term was used; in it they criticised Cubism and Futurism every bit not becoming fully abstract arts, stated that the spiritual feel was the root of creative production, and that fine art needed to exist actively in four dimensions including fourth dimension; staged an exhibition on a bandstand on Tverskoy Boulevard in Moscow and posted 5000 copies of the manifesto on hoardings around the city.

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

Gabo visited London in 1935, and settled in 1936, where he establish a 'spirit of optimism and sympathy for his position as an abstruse artist'. At the outbreak of WWII he followed his friends Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson to St Ives in Cornwall, where he stayed initially with the fine art critic Adrian Stokes. Whilst in Cornwall he continued to work, albeit on a smaller scale. His influence was 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. In 1946 Gabo and his wife and girl emigrated to the The states, where they resided starting time in Woodbury, and afterward in Middlebury, Connecticut. Died 1977 in Waterbury, Connecticut.

Works [edit]

Constructed Head [edit]

• 

  Constructed Head No. one, c1915. Plywood, c54 x 32 x 31 cm.

• 

  Caput No. ii, c1916. Galvanised atomic number 26, originally painted with yellow ochre. 45 ten 40.5 ten 40.5 cm.

• 

  Caput No. 2, 1923-24, based on an original design of 1916. Ivory rhodoid (celluloid), 43.2 x 31.one 10 31.1 cm. DMA.

• 

  Head No. two, 1916, enlarged version 1964. Steel. 175.three x 134 x 122.6 cm. Tate.

other [edit]

• 

  Caput of a Woman, c1917-twenty (after a work of 1916). Celluloid and metal, 62.2 ten 48.9 ten 35.4 cm. MoMA.

• 

  model for Constructed Body 1917, reassembled 1981. Cardboard, 39.5 x 29 ten 16 cm. Tate.

• 

  Kinetic Construction (Standing Wave), 1919-twenty, replica 1985. Metal, wood and electric motor. 61.half-dozen 10 24.one x 19 cm. Tate.

• 

  Project for a Radio Station, 1919-twenty. Ink on paper.

• 

  Belfry, 1921-22. Cellulose nitrate, xiii x seven.7 ten 6.1 cm. Yale.

• 

  model for Column, 1920-21. Cellulose nitrate, 14.3 x 9.5 10 9.5 cm. Tate.

• 

  Column, c1923, reconstructed 1937. Perspex, woods, metal, and glass. 104.5 x 75 cm. Guggenheim.

• 

  Construction en Creux, c1921-22. Plastic and wood. Reproduced in the catalogue of the Erste Russische Kunstausstellung, Berlin, 1922, nether title Model for a Spatial Construction C (Model for a Plastic Glass).

Gabo, Pevsner, Realisticheskii manifest, v Aug 1920, i sheet (58.8x73.6 cm — edition of 5000), JPG.

Martin, Nicholson, Gabo (eds.), Circle: International Survey of Constructive Art, 1937, Log.

Naum Gabo–Antoine Pevsner, 1948, Log, PDF.

Dreier, Sweeney, Gabo, Three Lectures on Modern Fine art, 1949, Log.

Publications [edit]

• with Nathan Pevsner (Нотон Певзнер), Realisticheskii manifest [Реалистический манифест], Moscow: Second State Printing House, 5 Aug 1920, 1 canvass (58.8x73.half-dozen cm — edition of 5000). Manuscript. Issued as a affiche to accompany the artists' joint open-air exhibition on Tverskoie Boulevard. Points out the limitations of cubism and futurism, outlining the principles for a new sculptural technique; in the 1923 version for G compressed into four points: the importance of life equally the starting point for fine art, the emphasis on infinite and time, the rejection of mass, and the espousal of kinetic rhythms as a means of expressing time. Written by Gabo, signed also by Pevzner. Issued equally a poster to back-trail the artists' joint open-air exhibition on Tverskoie Boulevard, which opened half dozen Aug. In a notation written ca. in the 1970s, Gabo stated that the manifesto poster was stuck up all over Moscow past students from the Vkhutemas (at this signal even so the Free Studios) on the 2nd day of the exhibition, vii Aug. 1967 recording of Gabo reading the manifesto. Discussed in Lodder 1983: 38-40, Khan-Magomedov 1996 (RU). (Russian)
  • [Anonym], "Realista kiáltvány", Egység 2:5, Vienna, May 1922. (Hungarian)
  • Thesen aus dem realistischen Manifest Moskau 1920", G one, Berlin, Jul 1923, p 4. Translated excerpt. (German)
    • "Theses from the Realist Manifesto Moscow 1920", trans. in 1000: An Advanced Periodical of Art, Architecture, Design, and Film, 1923-1926, eds. Detlef Mertins and Michael William Jennings, Los Angeles: Getty Research Establish, 2010. (English language)
  • "The Realistic Manifesto", trans. Naum Gabo, in Gabo: Constructions, Sculpture, Paintings, Drawings, Engravings, London: Lund Humphries, 1957, pp 151-152; repr. in The Tradition of Constructivism, ed. Stephen Bann, New York: Viking Printing, 1974, pp 5-11; repr. in Russian Art of the Advanced: Theory and Criticism, 1902-1934, ed. John E. Bowlt, New York: Viking Press, 1976, pp 208-214; repr. in Fine art in Theory, 1900-1990: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, eds. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, Blackwell, 1992, pp 297-299. (English language)
  • "Realistický manifest", Výtvarné umění 17, 1967, pp 428-430. (Czech)
  • trans. Camilla Gray, The Structurist 8, Saskatoon, 1968, pp 43-47. (English)
  • "Das Realistische Manifest", in Naum Gabo: Sechzig Jahre Konstruktivismus, eds. Steven A. Nash and Jörn Merkert, Munich: Prestel, 1986, pp 203-204. (German)
  • "Manifiesto realista", trans. Julio Rodriguez Puertolas, in Teorías del arte contemporáneo, ed. Herschel B. Chipp, Madrid: Akal, 1995, pp 350-355. (Spanish)

• editor, with J.50. Martin and Ben Nicholson, Circumvolve: International Survey of Constructive Fine art, London, 1937; repr., New York: Praeger, 1971, viii+291 pp.
• with Katherine S. Dreier and James Johnson Sweeney, Iii Lectures on Modern Art, The Philosophical Library, 1949.
• Gabo: Constructions, Sculpture, Paintings, Drawings, Engravings, intro. Herbert Read and Leslie Martin, London: Lund Humphries, 1957, 193 pp.
• Of Defined Arts, New York: Pantheon Books, 1962, xviii+205 pp. A.Westward. Mellon lectures in the fine arts, 8.
• Gabo on Gabo: Texts and Interviews, eds. & trans. Martin Hammer and Christina Lodder, East Sussex: Artists Bookworks, 2002, xiii+295 pp.

Catalogues [edit]

• Naum Gabo, Antoine Pevsner, New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1948, 83 pp. Catalogue.
• Naum Gabo: The Constructive Process, ed. Teresa Newman, Tate Gallery, London, 1976, 63 pp. Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Tate Gallery, 3 Nov-12 Dec 1976.
• Naum Gabo: Sixty Years of Constructivism, eds. Steven A. Nash and Jörn Merkert, Munich: Prestel, 1985, 272 pp. Published on the occasion of the exhibition held at the Dallas Museum of Fine art, 29 Sep-17 November 1985 and various other locations; includes the Catalogue Raisonné and a consummate Chronology.
  • Naum Gabo: Sechzig Jahre Konstruktivizmus, Munich: Prestel Verlag, 1986.
• Naum Gabo Monoprints, ed. Graham Williams, Ashford: Florin Press for Kettle'southward Yard, Cambridge & The Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, 1987, 71 pp.
• Naum Gabo: The Effective Idea: Sculpture, Drawings, Paintings, Monoprints, London: S Banking concern Lath, 1987, 64 pp. Exhibition held at Museum of Modernistic Art, Oxford, England, 13 December 1987-7 Feb 1988, and elsewhere.
• Naum Gabo, ein russischer Konstruktivist in Berlin 1922-1932: Skulpturen, Zeichnungen und Architekturentwürfe, Dokumente und Archive aus der Sammlung der Berlinischen Galerie, ed. Jörn Merkert, Berlin: Berlinische Galerie, 1989, 158 pp. (German)
• Naum Gabo, 1890-1977, Annely Juda Fine Fine art, London, 1990.
• Naum Gabo, Annely Juda Fine Art, London, 1999.
• Naum Gabo and Colour, Annely Juda Art, London, 2004.
• Naum Gabo Monoprints, Alan Cristea Gallery, London, 2006.

Literature [edit]

Books

• Alexei Pevsner, A Biographical Sketch of My Brothers Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner, Amsterdam: Augustin & Schoonman, 1964, 56 pp.
  • Une esquisse biographique de mes frères : Naum Gabo et Antoine Pevsner, Zwanenburg: Augustin & Schoonman, 1968, 58 pp. (French)
  • Biografisk skisse av mine brødre Naum Gabo og Antoine Pevsner, Oslo: Oslo Universitet & Sonja Henies og Niels Onstads Stiftelser, 1971, 54 pp. [2] (Norwegian)
• Andrew Forge, An Appreciation of Naum Gabo, foreword Norman Reid, Biddenden/Kent: Florin Press, 1985, 47 pp.
• Martin Hammer, Christina Lodder, Constructing Modernity, the Art and Career of Naum Gabo, Yale University Press, 2000, 528 pp. TOC. [3]

Volume chapters, articles

• Christina Lodder, "Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner", in Lodder, Russian Constructivism, Yale Academy Press, 1983, pp 34-42. (English)
• Selim Khan-Magomedov, "Реалистический манифест" и пространственные конструкции Н. Габо и Н. Певзнера", in Arkhitektura sovetskogo avangarda [Архитектура советского авангарда], Moscow: Stroyizdat, 1996. (Russian)
• Christina Lodder, "Naum Gabo and the Quandaries of the Replica", Tate Papers, 2007.
• Christina Lodder, "Naum Gabo equally a Soviet Émigré in Berlin", Tate Papers, 2010.

Talks

• Christina Lodder, "Naum Gabo: Discovering the Archive", 2009.

Links [edit]

• http://world wide web.naum-gabo.com/
• Gabo at Wikipedia
• http://world wide web.tate.org.united kingdom of great britain and northern ireland/servlet/ArtistWorks?cgroupid=999999961&artistid=1137&page=1

enswerpoole.blogspot.com

Source: https://monoskop.org/Naum_Gabo