GABO, NAUM

original name Naum Neemia Pevsner born Aug. 5, 1890, Bryansk, Russia died Aug. 23, 1977, Waterbury, Conn., U.S. Linear Construction #1, Variation, Perspex plastic and nylon thread sculpture by pioneering Constructivist sculptor whose use of such materials as glass, plastic, and metal signaled a rejection of traditional concepts of mass in favour of a sense of spatial movement. Gabo studied medicine, natural science, and engineering at the University of Munich. In 1913 he walked from Munich to Florence and Venice, absorbing art and architecture. Early in his life he changed his name to Gabo in order to distinguish himself from his brother, Antoine Pevsner, a painter. While in Paris in 1913/14 he met Alexander Archipenko and others involved with the avant-garde movement. In Stockholm in 1915 he produced his first Cubist-influenced sculptures, exemplified by Head of a Woman (1916, celluloid and metal). During World War I Gabo lived with his brother in Oslo, where they experimented along the Constructivist lines laid down by their fellow Russian Vladimir Tatlin. Returning to Russia after the Revolution, Gabo and Pevsner saw political forces redirect art from exploration to propaganda. In 1920 they issued the Realistic Manifesto of Constructivism, which they posted and distributed in the streets of Moscow. In it they asserted that art had a value and function independent of the state and that geometric principles were to be the basis for sculpture, in which line now defined the volumes of empty space instead of mass. In 1920 Gabo produced Kinetic Composition, a motor-driven sculpture that demonstrated his principles. He left Russia in 1922 and lived for 10 years in Berlin, where he worked with Lszl Moholy-Nagy and others. In 1932 he went to Paris, then to England from 1936 to 1946. Curves replaced angles in his new spatial constructions made of taut wire and plastic thread. He moved to the United States in 1946 and in 195354 taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Architecture. The motif of Gabo's sculptural work is indicated in its titles: Spiral Theme (Museum of Modern Art, New York City), Translucent Variation on Spheric Theme (1951; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City), Linear Construction in Space, Number 4 (195758; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City). One of his most impressive works is a sculpture commissioned for the Bijenkorf Building, Rotterdam (1954), unveiled in 1957.