Naum Gabo vs. Wassily Kandinsky
Side-by-side comparison of two thinkers
Naum Gabo
1890 – 1977
Naum Gabo was an influential sculptor, theorist, and key figure in Russia's post-Revolution avant-garde and the subsequent development of twentieth-century sculpture. His work combined geometric abstraction with a dynamic organization of form in small reliefs and constructions, monumental public sculpture and pioneering kinetic works that assimilated new materials such as nylon, wire, lucite and semi-transparent materials, glass and metal. Responding to the scientific and political revolutions of his age, Gabo led an eventful and peripatetic life, moving to Berlin, Paris, Oslo, Moscow, London, and finally the United States, and within the circles of the major avant-garde movements of the day, including Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism, the Bauhaus, de Stijl and the Abstraction-Création group.
"Space and time are the only forms on which life is built and hence art must be constructed... The realisation of our perceptions of the world in the forms of sp…"
Wassily Kandinsky
1866 – 1944
Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was a Russian painter and art theorist active in Germany during the late Belle Époque and Interwar eras. Kandinsky is generally credited as one of the pioneers of abstraction in Western art. Born in Moscow, he began painting studies at the age of 30.
"If until now colour and form were used as inner agents, it was mainly done subconsciously. The subordination of composition to geometrical form is no new idea .…"