Naum Neemia Pevsner Gabo
Opus Eight

About the Item

Naum Gabo was a major constructivist sculptor and highly influential member of the European avant-garde art movement. Gabo signaled a rejection of conventional sculptural modes by employing media such as glass, metal, and plastic in his work, and he is particularly recognized for his kinetic (moving) sculptures. He was also an innovative printmaker, a role that he embraced following his emigration to America in the 1940s. Gabo was born Neemia Pevsner to a Jewish family in Russia. He changed his name to Naum Gabo at about the age of twenty-five, around the time he decided to become an artist. Gabo left Russia about 1910 for Munich, Germany, where he studied art at the Technische Hochscule. He was first exposed to the works of the Cubists in 1912 when he visited his brother Antoine Pevsner is Paris. After spending the war years in Norway, Gabo returned to Russia in 1917. The enthusiasm of the Revolution inspired him to create art that would express the optimism of a new society. In 1920, he and Pevsner co-authored The Realistic Manifesto, an important early document in the development of Constructivism. Gabo emigrated to Berlin, Germany, in 1922, but left for London during the Nazi’s rise to power. After World War II, Gabo emigrated to the United States, settling in Connecticut, where he remained until his death in 1977. Gabo first began producing monoprints in 1950, at the age of 60, under the influence of William Ivins, Jr., the retired curator of prints at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. By the mid-1970s, he had produced a total of twenty monoprints, twelve of which he selected for a portfolio. The prints can be seen as a logical extension of his sculptural exploration of form and space, and are comprised of simple images of fluid geometry rendered in monochromatic fields of color. Along with the best of his constructions, this remarkable group of monoprints is characterized by elegant compositions of seemingly perfect balance, and like their sculptural counterparts, achieved with a minimum of means.

Creator:

Naum Neemia Pevsner Gabo (1890 - 1977)

Dimensions:

Height: 12 in (30.48 cm)Width: 9.5 in (24.13 cm)

Medium:

Monoprint

Movement & Style:

American Modern

Period:

20th Century

Condition:

Gallery Location: