Amulet, undated (between 1946 and 1963)

The carving is in a small box, with a note to Surrealist artist and poet Kay Sage (d. 1963) reading: ‘Dear Kay / This is an Amulet / carved by me for you. It is tactile. / Hold it in your hand and only / if it feels right to you keep it. / The title is “Femme Accroupie” / You will soon enough find out why. / Gabo’.

Sage was born in Albany, New York, in 1898. In 1940 she married the artist Yves Tanguy, whom she had met three years earlier and with whom she lived in a farmhouse in Woodbury, Connecticut, from the end of the Second World War. Gabo moved to Middlebury (8 miles away) in 1946, and met Sage in 1947. They became close friends. She died in 1963.