Naum Gabo

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Naum Gabo (1957)

Naum Gabo (born Russian Наум Абрамович Певснер / Naum Abramovich Pewsner * 5. August 1890 in Bryansk , Russian Empire ; † 23. August 1977 in Waterbury , Connecticut , USA ) was a Russian sculptor of constructivism , which also as a painter , Architect and designer .

Family and origin

Naum Gabo was the sixth of the seven children of the Jewish couple Boris Pewsner, owners of a metal factory, and Agrippina-Fanny Pewsner (née Oserski). In a religious sense, however, his Russian Orthodox wet nurse had more influence over Gabo. The older brother Antoine Pevsner was also an artist. At first he was connected to an intensive, artistic exchange, later both came into more and more competition with each other. His younger brother Alexei Pevsner published several art history publications, including about his brothers. From 1936 to 1959 Gabo had no contact with his family in the Soviet Union. It was not until 1962 that he visited his siblings who lived there again.

Since 1937 he was married to the American painter Miriam Pevsner (born Israel), great niece of the painter Jozef Israëls . Their daughter Nina-Serafima was born on May 20, 1941.

Life

childhood

Naum Gabo grew up in Bryansk . According to his own statements, he is said to have made his first sculptural attempts there. From 1904 Gabo went to school in Tomsk after he was referred to his principal of the school in Bryansk because of a ridiculous poem. There he witnessed the suppression of the Russian Revolution in 1905 . His parents took him back to Bryansk, but at the age of 17 he was arrested for distributing socialist writings to workers. He was released again through his influential father, but had to continue his school education in Kursk and completed it with a commendation for his achievements in literature and creative writing.

Studied in Germany (1910-1914)

He started studying medicine in Germany. After two months in Berlin , he enrolled at the University of Munich . Here he met Kandinsky . However, he soon switched from his unpopular studies to natural science subjects and finally enrolled at the Technical University of Munich for structural engineering. But he also attended lectures on philosophy and art history , including those given by Heinrich Wölfflin . In 1913 he traveled to northern Italy on foot, found art there “dead and no longer up to date”, and the desire for a new understanding of sculpture matured in him. When the First World War broke out , he fled with his brother Alexei to Denmark and then to Oslo .

The first constructions (1914-1917)

In Oslo he lived on his parents' money and found the time and peace to specify his artistic ideas. His first constructions emerged (constructive head no. 1 and no. 2, torso, head in a niche), in which the volume of the sculpture was formed only by surfaces joined together.

Artistic career

Fountain sculpture by Naum Gabo in London

He was a member of the constructivist art movement in Russia . He changed his name to avoid confusion with his brother Antoine Pevsner. After living in Munich and Norway , he returned to Russia after the October Revolution . In 1920 he and his brother Antoine published the Realistic Manifesto , which was to have a decisive influence on the development of sculpture. The First Russian Art Exhibition in Berlin in 1922 showed a whole series of his sculptures Konstruktiver Kopf Nr. 2 (1915) , Konstruktiver Kopf Nr. 3 (1916) , Konstruktiver Torso , Raumgestaltung A. , Raumgestaltung B. , Raumgestaltung C. (model of a glass sculpture ) , Relief encreux , kinetic construction (time as a new element in the plastic arts) . His works revolutionized sculpture as such in that it was no longer “plastic as mass”, but constructions. Gabo's plastic system is based on the diagonally crossed surfaces of a basic form as a spatial construction. The space is viewed as depth. It is significant that Gabo's constructions realize not only the statics, but also the dynamics in order to use “time” as a new element in art.

Since his conception of art could not be reconciled with the communist guidelines, he moved via Berlin in 1922, where he made the acquaintance of the old German artist Adolf Oberländer , Paris (1924), New York (1926) to Boston , where he studied architecture at Harvard University taught.

In 1931 he was a founding member of the artist movement Abstraction-Création in Paris, together with Theo van Doesburg , Antoine Pevsner , Auguste Herbin and Georges Vantongerloo .

Naum Gabo was a participant in documenta 1 (1955) and documenta II (1959) in Kassel .

Honors

In 1965 Gabo was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and in 1969 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Quote

  • "Up until now, the sculptors have given preference to the mass and paid little or no attention to such an important component of mass as space ... we consider it an absolute sculptural element" .

Bibliography

  • Martin Hammer, Christina Lodder: Constructing Modernity. The Art & Career of Naum Gabo. Yale University Press, 2000, ISBN 978-0-300-07688-2 .
  • Claus Maywald-Pitellos: Naum Gabo. Constructivism, worldview and modernity. Robert Wiegner Verlag, Königswinter 1998, ISBN 3-931775-03-8 .
  • Steven A. Nash, Jörn Merkert: Naum Gabo. Sixty years of constructivism. Prestel , 1986, ISBN 978-3-7913-0773-2 .
  • Eberhard Roters (ed.): First Russian art exhibition: Berlin 1922. Galerie van Diemen & Co., Berlin 1922, reprint König, Cologne 1988, ISBN 3-88375-085-9 (commented by Horst Richter).

Web links

Commons : Naum Gabo  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See web link archINFORM
  2. ↑ Members: Naum Gabo. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed March 29, 2019 .
  3. ^ American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Book of Members ( PDF ). Retrieved April 18, 2016
personal data
SURNAME Gabo, Naum
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pevsner, Naum Abramowitsch; Габо, Наум Абрамович
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian artist
DATE OF BIRTH August 5, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Bryansk
DATE OF DEATH 23rd August 1977
Place of death Waterbury (Connecticut)