ABSTRACT
Born Naum Neemia Pevzner in Bryansk,
Russia, Gabo became a central figure of
international Constructivism in the 1920s
contributing significantly to the development
of creative thought and work in Russia,
Germany, England and the United States of
America. Gabo’s early training was scientific.
He enrolled at the University of Munich in
1910 as a medical student and subsequently
studied natural sciences and engineering in
Munich. During 1911-12 Gabo also attended
Wo¨llflin’s lectures in the history of art and
became increasingly interested in creative
work. His first constructions, figurative works
with a Cubist flavour to them, followed in
1915. Subsequently his art, progressing as a
process of meticulous investigation, led to
constructions that displayed all the precision
of an engineer in the distribution of modern
materials (metals, glass, plastics), yet the
function of the structures devised by Gabo
was aesthetic and not mechanical usefulness,
reflecting, embodying and exemplifying
instead the concepts of space and perception
outlined in Gabo’s essays and in his book Of
Divers Arts (1962) in particular.
