About this artwork
Gabo’s first five monoprints were made within a few months of each other early in 1950. Opus Fourwas engraved in cherry wood. Instead of treating the image as a sculptural form which occupies the centre of the print, here he inked up the entire surface so that the image and its surrounding space have equal weight. This was an approach which Gabo constantly spoke of, in relation to his sculpture: that the space around a sculpture was as important as the sculpture itself. The National Galleries of Scotland collection includes another example of Opus Four,where the image is the other way around. There are thirty-two examples of this work, some of them, like this one, reversed.
Updated 2021
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artist:
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title:Opus Four
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date created:1950
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materials:Monoprint in black ink on oriental paper
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measurements:15.90 x 13.70 cm (image size); 28.10 x 19.80 cm (base material size)
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object type:
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credit line:Accepted from Nina Williams under the Cultural Gifts Scheme by HM Government and allocated to Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, 2020
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accession number:GMA 5653
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gallery:
Naum Gabo
Naum Gabo
Gabo was born in Russia and trained in Munich as a scientist and engineer. He made his first geometrical constructions while living in Oslo in 1915. Gabo was influenced by scientists who were developing new ways of understanding space, time and matter. He responded to this in his sculpture by using...
