Aleksandr Drevin

Aleksandr Davydovich Drevin ( _ru. Александр Давыдович Древин, 3 July 1889, Cēsis, Latvia – 26 February 1938, near Moscow) was a Russian 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-Produjctivist' stylistic manifesto urging the rejection of easel painting. Drevin became a professor of painting in Vkhutein. 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 exectuted on 26 February.

References

*A History of Painting, Alan Bird