Naum Gabo

Russian-born Jewish sculptor Naum Gabo (1890–1977) is one of the 20th century’s most unsung artistic masters. In 1917, Gabo developed the theories and practice of a new art movement he called Constructivism, and, along with his brother, he wrote the Realistic Manifesto of 1920, which promoted art as a part of man’s everyday existence without the confinement of artistic terms and convention. In the 1920s and ’30s, Gabo traveled extensively to the hubs of modernism in Europe, including a stint teaching at the Bauhaus. He was with Mondrian’s Abstraction-Creation group in the wake of the Nazi occupation of Paris, and upon the outbreak of WWII, the artist moved to Cornwall, England, and later to the United States.