Constructivist art pioneer Naum Gabo was born Neyemiya Borisovich Pevzner into a Jewish family in Bryansk, Russia, on 5 August 1890, although he had a Russian Orthodox nanny and, like the offspring of many other assimilated families, was baptised. His older brother was fellow Constructivist artist Antoine Pevsner and Gabo changed his name, while in Norway in 1915, in order to avoid confusion between them. It was in Norway that he began to make constructed sculpture, but he returned to Russia at the time of the October revolution in 1917. In 1920 Gabo wrote The Realistic Manifesto, an expression of the aims and philosophy behind his art and two years later he left Russia for Berlin to exhibit in The First Russian Art Exhibition at the Van Diemen Gallery. He did not return to Russia until 1962, remaining in Berlin, where he made constructed sculptures, carried out a number of architectural projects and made contact with the Bauhaus school and the De Stijl group. In 1932, he left Germany for Paris, where he remained until 1935. In Paris, Gabo exhibited with the Abstraction-Création group, before moving to England the same year.
In 1936 he met and married the painter Miriam Franklin (née Israels, 1907-1993). During his time in England, Gabo mixed in modernist circles with the critic Herbert Read, abstract artists including Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth, and the architect Leslie Martin, as well as with fellow émigrés. He edited the Circle: International Survey of Constructive Art (1937) with Leslie Martin and Ben Nicholson, discovered the new transparent material of perspex, which he explored in his sculpture, and exhibited and sold many sculptures. In 1938 he visited the USA, where he also exhibited, but returned to England and spent the war years in Cornwall, where his daughter, Nina, was born. He also wrote articles, kept a diary and made a series of paintings. After seven years in England, the family left to settle permanently in the USA in 1946.
Gabo exhibited widely in both the USA and Europe, and lectured at Yale, Harvard, and in Chicago. He took American citizenship in 1952, taught at the Harvard University Graduate School of Architecture (1953-54) and delivered the A. W. Mellon Lectures in 1959 in Washington DC. He completed a number of large-scale commissions including a 25-metre high freestanding sculpture for the Bijenkorf Building in Rotterdam. In 1971 Gabo was awarded an Honorary KBE by Queen Elizabeth ll. He continued to receive honours, prizes, commissions and international recognition until the end of his life. He died in Connecticut, USA on 23 August 1977. His work is represented in numerous UK public collections including the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham, Kettle's Yard, Cambridge and the Tate.
