Naum Gabo, Annely Juda Fine Art, London, 1999. 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. My works of this time, up to 1924 , are all in the search for an image which would fuse the sculptural element with the architectural element into one unit. Artist: Naum Gabo, American, born Russia, 18901977 Model of the Column (formerly Model for Glass Fountain) ca. The ultimate winner was the pompous, neo-classical design of architect Boris Iofan. They were often projects for monumental public schemes, rarely achieved, in which sculpture and architecture came together. 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 Constructed Head No. Gabo saw the Revolution as the beginning of a renewal of human values. Gabo was a fluent speaker and writer in German, French, and English in addition to his native Russian. Gabo elaborated many of his ideas in the Constructivist Realistic Manifesto, which he issued with his brother, sculptor Antoine Pevsner as a handbill accompanying their 1920 open-air exhibition in Moscow. For Gabo, sculptures like Column, which gave a certain impression of weightlessness, "appeal[ed] to minds and feelings more than crude physical senses". In the manifesto Gabo criticized Cubism and Futurism as not becoming fully abstract arts and stated that the spiritual experience was the root of artistic production. 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. Set within the Perspex planes are opaquely colored, geometric floating shapes, and an open ring. Gabos acute awareness of turmoil sought out solace in the peacefulness that was so fully realized in his ideal art forms. St. Ives, Cornwall had been home to a large community of artists since the 1920s, including Bernard Leach, Adrian Stokes, and the fisherman and artistic savant Alfred Wallis. Two years later, he defied his father's wishes by transferring to study maths, natural and applied sciences, engineering, and, finally, philosophy. He moved back to Russia in 1917, to become involved in politics and art, spending five years in Moscow with his brother Antoine. He was part of the St Ives group in Cornwall, alongside Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson. 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. Gabo worked through various movements and ideas, eventually settling in the United States after the Second World War. Instead, they remained in St Ives for seven years, meeting with other artists regularly at Adrian Stokes's coastal property to discuss, according to Gabo, "Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism, Eastern philosophies, and English marine traditions, behind the blackout curtains". 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. Gabo was associated briefly with the Bauhaus School - then the hub of European Constructivism - lecturing and writing for their journal. 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. 'I consider this Column the culmination of that search. It is one of a number of works created during the early 1920s which demonstrate Gabo's departure from the early, figurative style of the Constructed Heads, and his movement towards a more pure abstraction. 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. "Sculpture: Carving and construction in space,", The Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza Art Collection, Mr and Mrs Frank G. Logan Art Institute Prize. Lost in the Detail: Naum Gabo's Monoprints. base: 0.3 cm (1/8 in.) Model for 'Torsion', however, was eventually translated into a large fountain outside St Thomas' Hospital in London. 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'. These include Constructie, an 81-foot commemorative monument in front of the Bijenkorf Department Store (1954, unveiled in 1957) in Rotterdam, and Revolving Torsion, a large fountain outside St Thomas Hospital in London. Naum gabo artwork Rating: 4,3/10 1459 reviews. 2 grew from Gabo's unrealized plans for two public sculptures to stand outside the new Esso Building at the Rockefeller Center in New York. ', Published in: 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. 1928, rebuilt 1938 Perspex and plastic on aluminum base 27 11.3 10 cm (10 5/8 4 7/16 3 15/16 in.) The piece now at Yale was bought by the Socit Anonyme from the artist. Column is a representative piece of constructivist sculpture. 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. Naum gabo artwork. By the early 1930s, the political climate in Germany had grown increasingly nationalistic, anti-semitic, and toxic. [Internet]. It is March 1950 and Naum Gabo (1890-1977), the world-famous sculptor, is stabbing a mahogany table leg. He then moved to Woodbury, Connecticut, USA. 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. Naum Gabo biography. They were often projects for monumental public schemes, rarely achieved, in which sculpture and architecture came together. 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. 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. These earliest constructions originally in cardboard or wood were figurative such as the Head No.2 in the Tate collection. Gabo also began attending the art-history lectures of an influential tutor, Heinrich Wlfflin. May 7, 1938, By Martin Kemp / Find more prominent pieces of installation at Wikiart.org best visual art database. 2023 The Art Story Foundation. Naum Gabo, ein russischer Konstruktivist in Berlin 1922-1932: Skulpturen, Zeichnungen und Architekturentwrfe, Dokumente und Archive aus der Sammlung der Berlinischen Galerie, ed. Gabo was a fluent speaker and writer in German, French, and English in addition to his native Russian. A sojourn in Paris from 1911 to 1914 introduced him to cubism and futurism, two radical new approaches to making art. Lit: The work is composed of six meditations, in which Descartes attempts to establish a firm ", "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. 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. All Rights Reserved, Gabo on Gabo: Texts and Interviews Paperback - April, 2002, Constructing Modernity: The Art & Career of Naum Gabo, Naum Gabo: The constructive idea; sculpture, drawings, paintings, monoprint, 'Absolute' Art Discussed Here by Naum Gabo, Naum Gabo and the Quandaries of the Replica, TateShots: Interview with the artist Naum Gabo's daughter, Naum Gabo & Antoine Pevsner - The Realistic Manifesto (Manifesto Extract, 1920), Transcript of interview of Naum Gabo by Gunnar Jespersen, Gabo believed that art should have an explicit and functional value in society. The critic Herbert Read hailed it as 'the highest point ever reached by the aesthetic intuition of man'. His older brother was fellow Constructivist artist Antoine Pevsner; Gabo changed his name to avoid confusion with him. Model for 'Column' was created in 1921 by Naum Gabo in Constructivism style. His ingenious extension of Cubist painting techniques into the realm of sculpture predicated much abstract sculpture of the following decades. Visit the Frank Lloyd Wrightdesigned Guggenheim Museum in NYC, part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This move gave Naum the excuse he had craved to abandon his studies and concentrate on his art. 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. "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. The model, like the later piece, is made of glass, plastic, and metal. 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 would later remark that "if anyone made me a Jew, it was Hitler". Imaginative as Gabo was, his practicality lent itself to the conception and production of his works. During 1912-13, Gabo made his first trips to Paris with his brother Antoine, to whom he was very close. This was an adventurous approach to the concept of load-bearing in architecture, a job that would generally be performed by distinct components such as beams or ribs. Spiral Theme also helped to ensure Gabo's reputation within Britain. The birth of a daughter, Nina Serafima, in 1941, also brought him out of a period of creative torpor. 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". 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. He attended the local gymnasium in Kursk, before moving to Munich in 1911 to study medicine at his father's insistence, later recollecting that this was partly due to his ability to heal his mother's headaches with his hands. Celluloid and plastic, 5 5/8 x 3 3/4 x 3 3/4 (14.4 x 9.4 x 9.4) 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. After visiting London in 1935, Gabo settled in England the following year. Already, Bolshevik Russia was becoming hostile to artists of the avant-garde, as the grim paradigm of Socialist Realism appeared on the horizon. It is abstract, geometric, and created with industrial design methods. Artwork page for Model for Column, Naum Gabo, 19201 Many of Gabo's sculptures first appeared as tiny models. Just before the onset of the First World War in 1914, Gabo discovered contemporary art, by reading Kandinskys Concerning the Spiritual in Art, which asserted the principles of abstract art. Many other migr artists were congregating in England at this time, including old friends: Oskar Kokoschka, Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, and Piet Mondrian. The exactness of form leads the viewer to imagine journeying into, through, over and around his sculptures.