Biografie von Naum GABO (1890-1977)

Birth place: Briansk, Russia

Death place: Waterbury, CT

Addresses: Left Russia in 1922, lived in Berlin until 1932; Paris, 1932-37; Engl., 1937-46; Middlebury, CT

Profession: Sculptor, educator, painter, engraver

Studied: Univ. Munich, Germany.

Exhibited: Machine Art Exh., MoMA, 1927; MoMA, 1948 (large show of Gabo and his brother Antoine Pevsner); Tate Gal., London, 1950 (retrospective); WMAA, 1950-51, 1954, 1958, 1960. Awards: Logan medal, AIC, 1954; Guggenheim Fellowship, 1954; Brandeis award, 1960.

Member: NIAL

Work: Tate Gal., London; Hannover Mus., Germany; Moscow Inst. Art & Culture; Yale Univ. Art Gal.; MoMA; Guggenheim Mus.; BMA; bas-relief, lobby of U.S. Rubber Co. Bldg., NYC; sculpture, Rotterdam, Holland.

Comments: (Born Naum Pevsner, he changed his name about 1915 to distinguish himself from his brother Antoine Pevsner). The Russian Constructivist sculptor emigrated to the U.S. (from England where he had lived since 1937) in 1946. Although his strongest achievements occurred before coming to America, he was of great influence on a generation of American artists such as JosÈ de Rivera and Richard Lippold. Gabo taught design at Harvard Grad. School, 1953-54; also delivered Mellon Lectures, National Gallery of Art, Wash., DC, 1959. His lectures were later published under the title, Of Divers Arts (NYC: Pantheon Books, 1962).

Sources: WW66; Gabo with essays by Sir Herbert Read and Leslie Martin (London: Lund Humphries, 1957), includes English translation of Gabo and A. Pevsner's 1920 Realist Manifesto; Craven, Sculpture in America, 642-45