Pevsner, Antoine (1886–1962)

Russian-born sculptor and painter, a French citizen from 1930.

A pioneer of Russian constructivism, his work was entirely abstract but distinguished by the mathematical precision of its spiralling curves and planes, as in Developable Column 1942 (Museum of Modern Art, New York). Like his brother Naum Gabo, he worked with celluloid and wire, but also copper, brass sheet, and bronze.

Pevsner studied in Kiev and Paris and for a period painted in a cubist style, for example Carnaval 1915 (Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow). He spent World War I in Oslo with his brother and the two experimented with constructions that substituted thin, overlapping planes for solid mass. Antoine went on to teach in Moscow and then Berlin, where he helped organize the ‘First Russian Art Exhibition’ 1922, consisting of avant-garde works. By 1921–22 Russian official tolerance of experimental art was on the wane, and Pevsner settled in Paris 1923.