Word: gabo
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...20th century has seen almost everything in the way of abstract sculptures, from huge sheets of hammered copper to tiny, tinkling aluminum mobiles. But Naum Gabo, a 62-year-old Russian, is the first sculptor to make his work almost invisible. Last week a syth Street gallery showed a few of his sculptures, mostly pieces of transparent plastic put together in sharp angles and looping curves to form abstractions as still and shiny-and about as warming-as winter sunlight...
...Gabo's method is called "constructivism," and he has been at it for almost half a century. He began in 1915, by taking flat wooden pieces and assembling them to form a portrait head. Says he: "I saw that I could make a head without chipping from a block or using clay to form a mask." The simplicity of the idea appealed to Gabo. Gradually he and a group of friends worked out a new art movement, putting together simple, geometric shapes-squares, circles and ellipses -into more or less complex, graceful structures...
...while after the Russian Revolution, Gabo & Co. were the darlings of the Bolsheviks. Gabo went to work designing an ultramodern radio station. But one day in 1921, says Gabo, "all the studios were closed by the government, and we were forced out." Gabo went to Berlin. In a 1931 international competition, he entered plans for a new Palace of the Soviets which looked like an immense butterfly. They were rejected: by then, the Communist line had switched from ultramodern to ultra-stodgy art, and the butterfly was less appropriate than the old Russian bear. Gabo was through with Moscow...