Aleksandr Drevin

Portrait of a Young Man, 1933

Aleksandr Davydovich Drevin (Latvian: Aleksandrs Rūdolfs Drēviņš, Russian: Александр Давыдович Древин, 3 July 1889, Cēsis, Latvia – 26 February 1938, near Moscow) was a Latvian painter.

Drevin attended art school in Riga and first came to Moscow in 1914. He studied under Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. Between 1920 and 1921 he was a member of the Inkhuk but later left, together with Wassily Kandinsky, Kliunkov, and Nadezhda Udaltsova, because of the Constructivist-Productivist stylistic manifesto urging the rejection of easel painting. Drevin became a professor of painting at Vkhutemas. In 1922, he was sent to work the First Russian Art Exhibition at the Van Diemen Gallery in Berlin. He travelled across Russia, to Kazakhstan and Armenia.

Drevin often painted a "brutal primitivism", lacking any political message or any purpose at all. His paintings have been compared to those of Vlaminck. Drevin's paintings intentionally were empty of illusionism and decorativeness.

He was married to Nadezhda Udaltsova.

Drevin was arrested by the NKVD on 17 January 1938, and executed on 26 February.

References

• A History of Painting, Alan Bird

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