Opus Two
About this artwork
Gabo made his first five monoprints in quick succession in the early months of 1950. He later recalled that they were prompted by the visit of a neighbour and former print curator, Williams Ivins Jnr., author of several books and essays on printmaking: ‘He turned up one day with a pocket full of engraving tools and a piece of wood and forced me to sit down, thrust into my hands the tools and the wood and guided me how to engrave.’ This monoprint was cut into a prepared piece of holly wood, a wood often used for wood engraving. It allowed Gabo to progress from Opus One and produce a more sophisticated rendering of transparency and space. There are forty recorded examples of this work.
Published September 2021
-
artist:
-
title:Opus Two
-
date created:1950
-
materials:Monoprint in blue ink on Japan paper
-
measurements:20.40 x 15.50 cm (image size); 28.00 x 20.00 cm (base material size)
-
object type:
-
credit line:Accepted from Gareth Williams under the Cultural Gifts Scheme by HM Government and allocated to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, 2020
-
accession number:GMA 5650
-
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...