Naum Gabo: Construction

“[The Constructive idea.. ] has revealed a universal law that the elements of a visual art such as lines, colours, shapes, possess their own forces of expression independent of any association with the external aspects of the world; that their life and action are self-conditioned psychological phenomena rooted in human nature; that those elements are not chosen by convention by any utilitarian or other reason as words and figures are, they are not merely abstract signs, but they are immediately and organically bound up with human emotions. The revelation of this fundamental law has opened up a vast field in art giving the possibility of expression to those human impulses and emotions which have been neglected.”

Naum Gabo

Naum Gabo (1937) 'Editorial', p. 7 as cited in: W. Rotzler (1989) Constructive Concepts - A History of Constructive Art from Cubism to the Present, Rizzoli.
1936 - 1977, Circle: International Survey of Constructive Art, 1937

Life , World , Law , Art

“Either build functional houses and bridges or create pure art or both. Don't confuse one with the other. Such art is not pure constructive art, but merely an imitation of the machine.”

Naum Gabo

quote, 1919; as cited in: Ruth Latta (1948) Naum Gabo. Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.), p. 18
Here Gabo publicly criticized Tatlin's design for the 'Monument to the Third International' (1919)
1918 - 1935

Art , Housing

“Space and time are the only forms on which life is built and hence art must be constructed… The realisation of our perceptions of the world in the forms of space and time is the only aim of our pictorial and plastic art… We renounce the thousand-year-old delusion in art that held the static rhythms as the only elements of the plastic and pictorial arts. We affirm in these arts a new element, the kinetic rhythms as the basic forms of our perception of real time.”

Naum Gabo

As quoted in: Fred Kleiner (2008) Intl Stdt Edition-Gardner's Art Thru/Ages: Globl Hist. Vol.2, p. 949
1918 - 1935, Realistic Manifesto, 1920

Life , World , Art , Time

“We take four planes and we construct with them the same volume as of four tons of mass.”

Naum Gabo

quote, 1920; from Tate Modern, London: Naum Gabo http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/gabo-head-no-2-t01520
A method known as 'stereometric construction' was central to Gabo's work, by which form was achieved through the description of space rather than the establishment of mass (Tate Modern)
1918 - 1935

“We know only what we do, what we make, what we construct; and all that we make, all that we construct, are realities. I call them images, not in Plato's sense (namely that they are only reflections of reality), but I hold that these images are the reality itself and that there is no reality beyond this reality except when in our creative process we change the images: then we have created new realities.”

Naum Gabo

Quote of Naum Gabo, 1950; as cited in: Eidos: a journal of painting, sculpture and design. Nr.1, p. 31
1936 - 1977

Reality , Sense , Change

“From the very beginning of the Constructivist Movement it was clear to me that a constructed sculpture, by its very method and technique brings sculpture very near to architecture... My works of this time up to 1924.... are all in the search for an image which would fuse the sculptural element with the architectural element in one unit. I consider this Column the culmination of that search.”

Naum Gabo

Quote of Gabo, as cited in: Simon Wilson (1991), Tate Gallery: An Illustrated Companion, Tate Gallery, London, revised edition. p. 146
undated

Search , Time

“Quotes from: Leslie Martin, Ben Nicholson and N. Gabo (eds.) Circle: International Survey of Constructive Art.”

Naum Gabo

London: Faber and Faber
1936 - 1977, Circle: International Survey of Constructive Art, 1937

Quotes , Art