Wednesday, June 3, 2020

Artist of the day, June 3, 2020: Naum Gabo, a Russian sculptor, theorist (#1011)

Naum Gabo, KBE born Naum Neemia Pevsner (1890 – 1977), was an influential sculptor, theorist, and key figure in Russia's post-Revolution avant-garde and the subsequent development of twentieth-century sculpture. 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.

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-Création group. Two preoccupations, unique to Gabo, were his interest in representing negative space—"released from any closed volume" or mass—and time. 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 mass—and the latter in his pioneering work, Kinetic Sculpture (Standing Waves) (1920), often considered the first kinetic work of art.

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. 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." Gabo held a utopian belief in the power of sculpture—specifically abstract, Constructivist sculpture—to express human experience and spirituality in tune with modernity, social progress, and advances in science and technology.

 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. 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. The Tate Gallery, London held a major retrospective of Gabo's work in 1966 and holds many key works in its collection, as do the Museum of Modern Art and Guggenheim Museum in New York. Work by Gabo is also included at Rockefeller Center in New York City and The Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza Art Collection in Albany, NY.

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Mr. Naum Gabo

 Head No. 2, 1916

 Model for ‘Constructed Torso’, 1917

Head of a Woman, 1917-20

 Kinetic Construction (Standing Wave), 1919–20

 Sketch for a Kinetic Construction, 1922

 Column, 1923

1925 Circular relief, 1925

1925 Model for ‘Rotating Fountain’, 1925

 Model for 'Construction in Space' Two Cones, 1927

 Model for ‘Double Relief in a Niche’, 1929–30

 Two Cubes (Demonstrating the Stereometric Method), 1930

 Construction: Stone with a Collar, 1933

 Red Cavern, 1936

 Construction on a Line, 1937

 Model for 'Spheric Theme", 1937

 Model for ‘Construction in Space ‘Arch’’, 1937

 Construction in Space with Crystalline Centre, 1938–40

 Construction in Space (Crystal), 1939

 Spiral Theme, 1941

 Spiral Theme, 1941

 Linear Construction No. 1, 1942–43

Linear Construction in Space No.2, 1949

 Model for a ‘Monument to the Unknown Political Prisoner’, 1952

 Linear Construction in Space no. 3, with Red, 1952-53

 Construction in Space with Balance on Two Points, 1956

 Voor-CS-Rotterdam, n.d.

 Bronze Spheric Theme, 1960

 Linear Construction No. 2 1959-60

 Mid Century Modern Lucite Pendant Lamp Hanging String Light, 1960's

 Torsion (Project for a Fountain) 1960–64

 Model for ‘Construction in Space, Suspended", 1965

 Revolving Torsion, 1972–73 2

 Revolving Torsion, 1972–73



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