Naum Gabo (Russian, 1890-1977)
Construction for a Pond

signed and dated 'Gabo 31' (lower right); further signed 'N Gabo' (upside-down upper left)
pastel and watercolour on paper

Unframed: 21 x 17 cm. (8 1/8 x 6 5/8 in.) Framed: 50.2 x 45.2 cm. (19 3/4 x 17 3/4 in.)

The artist, thence by descent
The Collection of Nina Williams (née Gabo), London
With Annely Juda Fine Art, London
With James Butterwick, London
Private Collection, London, from whom acquired by the present owner

Exhibited:
Mannheim, Kunsthalle & Duisburg, Wilhelm-Lehmbruck-Museum der Stadt Duisburg, Naum Gabo, 23 Jun-8 Aug 1965 (as Construction for a Fountain)
New York, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Plus by Minus: Today's Half Century, Mar-Apr 1968
London, Annely Juda Fine Art, Naum Gabo 1890-1977 Centenary Exhibition, 28 Jun-29 Sep 1990, pp.74-5, cat.57, illustrated.
London, Annely Juda Fine Art, The Thirties. Influences on Abstract Art in Britain, 2 Jul-19 Sept 1998, cat.no.7, illustrated.
New York, PaceWildenstein, Naum Gabo Pioneer of Abstract Sculpture, 4 Nov-11 Dec 1999, cat.no.16, illustrated.
London, Annely Juda Fine Art, Gabo and Colour, 15 Jan-27 Mar 2004, cat.no.11, illustrated.
London, Annely Juda Fine Art, Naum Gabo, 29 Apr-26 Jun 1999, cat.no.17, illustrated.

We are grateful to Dr Christina Lodder for her assistance in cataloguing this lot.

Naum Gabo was a central figure in Constructivism, a movement that rejected the idea of "art for art's sake" in favour of art as a practice directed towards social purposes and industrial design. However, Gabo took a more philosophical and sculptural approach than many of his peers.

Born in Russia to a Jewish family, he was the younger brother of fellow Constructivist sculptor Antoine Pevsner. In 1920, they wrote The Realistic Manifesto, which became one of the most important and radical documents in the history of modern art.

"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." - The Realistic Manifesto

This publication ultimately saw the split between Gabo and other Constructivist artists, such as Vladimir Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko. Their functional and productive approach to art departed from Gabo’s belief that art should stand independently as a pure investigation of the universe, unbothered by the politics of elsewhere.

Following 1922, the Soviet government began taking a hard-line approach to pure abstraction, leading to Gabo’s eventual departure from Russia for Berlin. It was here he was able to keep his concepts of Kinetic art alive, which subsequently led to his strong influence on the Bauhaus in Germany, and now internationally.

In this collection of drawings (Lots 25–27), Gabo's formal education in medicine, natural sciences, and engineering in Munich is evident. His approach to form and space is constructed with a logical mind rather than through pure creativity.

The year 1930 was a pivotal moment in Gabo’s career. Having fled the Soviet Union, he was living in Berlin, where he was deeply engaged with the Bauhaus and other European avant-garde circles. During the late 1920s and early 1930s, Gabo began moving away from the rigid, linear geometry of his early work toward more complex, curvilinear, and spherical shapes. His early drawings explore the "shell" or "envelope" of space, a concept that would later culminate in his famous works like Spheric Theme (1937).

Unlike traditional sculptors who carved from a solid block, Gabo "constructed" space. This is the case with all three drawings, Construction for a Pond (1931), Sketch for a Carving Stone (1930), and Face in a Headdress (1926), despite the fact they differ in subject matter and execution. Naum Gabo’s approach to negative space is evident; he didn’t draw a solid object, he drew the boundaries of a volume. Gabo often viewed his small drawings and models as prototypes for "monuments" or architectural structures.

The oval base in Sketch for a Carving Stone (1930) suggests a pedestal, indicating that he was imagining this form as a large-scale public sculpture that would integrate with a modern urban environment. Many years later, he created Stone Carving 1967/(73), made from Portuguese stone in the likeness of this original sketch.

Despite the present examples being works on paper, Gabo was one of the first artists to use industrial materials like Perspex (acrylic), nylon monofilament, and glass. The translucent quality of the shading in these drawings mimics the transparency he sought in his physical sculptures.

While Naum Gabo is fundamentally remembered as a titan of Constructivist sculpture, his works on paper, particularly his drawings, sketches, and unique monoprints, hold a highly significant, albeit quieter, place in his legacy. They are not merely afterthoughts to his three-dimensional work; rather, they serve as the conceptual blueprints and intimate extensions of his obsession with space, time, and movement.