First edition, one of 500 copies. The constructivist sculptor and painter Sir Naum Gabo (1890-1977) was born in Russia as Neyemiya Borisovich Pevzner and began to create sculptures under the name of Gabo in 1915. At that point, he had already studied medicine, then natural sciences and art history, as well as engineering in Munich, had met Kandinsky, joined his brother, the artist brother Antoine Pevsner in Paris, and then fled to Scandinavia when World War I broke out, before returning to Russia in 1917. He became an influential sculptor, theorist, and key figure in Russia's post-Revolutionary avant-garde, working in Moscow with Pevsner, Tatlin, Kandinsky and Malevich, and co-writing his ‘Реалистический манифест’ – a ‘Realistic Manifesto’ proclaiming the tenets of pure Constructivism – in 1920 (this is reproduced in the illustration facing p. 19). His later movements and explorations of art and ideas took him to Berlin, where he engaged with the artists of the de Stijl group and Bauhaus from 1922-1932. In 1936 Gabo settled in England, living first in London and then in Cornwall, and continued to develop the technical possibilities of sculpture, using Perspex, nylon monofilament, and other new materials in his work. Following the end of World War II, Gabo moved to the United States in 1946, where he taught briefly at Harvard, and created large sculpture commissions. He was created an Hon. KBE in 1971.

As the colophon explains, Andrew Forge (an artist, and professor and Dean at Yale University School of Art, as well as a friend of Gabo) ‘wrote this essay, and Sir Norman Reid the foreword, for a proposed new book on Gabo in 1980. [The foreword is, in fact, dated 1978.] The idea of a book grew into a serious of retrospective exhibitions, with an accompanying catalogue. This Appreciation of Naum Gabo [was] published to coincide with and complement the opening of the exhibition tour [of ‘Naum Gabo: Sixty Years of Constructivism’] in Dallas, September 1985’. Apart from a portrait photograph and the abovementioned Realistic Manifesto, the photographic illustrations show Gabo’s work to great effect, from ‘Kinetic Construction (Standing Wave)’ of 1919-1920 to the ‘Spheric Theme’ of 1974.

An Appreciation of Naum Gabo was published by the Florin Press in an edition of 500 copies, and this example is a presentation copy from Graham Williams (the founder of the Florin Press) and his wife Nina (the daughter of Naum Gabo), who had also contributed a ‘Catalogue Raisonné of the Constructions and Sculptures’ to Steven A. Nash and Jörn Merkert’s Naum Gabo: Sixty Years of Constructivism (Munich, 1985), which also accompanied the exhibition. The recipients of the volume were David Wilson (a printer, collector of private press books, and friend and collaborator of Graham Williams), and his wife Diana.