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Constructions artist in a variety of materials, designer, writer and teacher, born in Bryansk, Russia, as Naum Pevsner, brother of the painter Antoine Pevsner. As a young man he changed his name to Naum Gabo so as not to be confused with his brother. Gabo entered Munich University in 1910 to study medicine, then natural sciences, but also attended art history lectures. In 1912 transferred to an engineering school in Munich, in 1913–14 joining his brother in Paris. When World War I broke out he moved to Copenhagen, then Oslo, in 1915 beginning to make constructions. Although sometimes figurative, these were generally abstract, simple and beautiful using a variety of materials, notably later Perspex when he came to England. From 1917–22 Gabo was in Moscow, where he knew advanced artists such as Tatlin and Kandinsky.

Text source: 'Artists in Britain Since 1945' by David Buckman (Art Dictionaries Ltd, part of Sansom & Company)


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