Composition, 1924
‘A spatial construction, rich in spirituality, derives from an innate feeling for geometry and possesses an organic, almost unique form, which I find particularly exciting’.[1]
Antoine Pevsner 1959.
Pevsner was a Russian born sculptor and painter who studied at the School of Fine Arts in Kiev from 1902-1909 after which briefly attending the Academy of Beaux-Art in St Petersburg. Moving from painting to sculpture Pevsner initially used plastic and glass before turning to metals such as copper and bronze, emphasising the industrial elements of his work. Pevsner’s time studying art during the first decade of the twentieth century resulted in two pivotal visits to Paris in 1911 and 1913, at which point he took inspiration from the Cubism art movement. Generally accepted to have been stimulated by Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’ Avignon (1907), this movement offered Pevsner and his contemporaries alternative ways to explore perspective that rejected previously dominant Renaissance trends. Moreover, according to the art historian Douglas Cooper, Cubism was ‘stylistically the antithesis of Renaissance art’, with Picasso’s Demoiselles remaining the ‘logical picture to take as the starting point for Cubism because it marks the birth of a new pictorial idiom’.[2] Cubism overturned established conventions of perspective by introducing technical innovations and new types of artistic expression which, Cooper continues, ‘constitute virtually all the avant-garde developments in western art between 1909 and 1914…[and] has proved to be probably the most potent generative force in twentieth-century art’.[3] It was during this same period, however, with tensions in Europe building and in an atmosphere of impermanency and flux, that the subsequent sociopolitical, religious, intellectual and cultural fractures paved the way for abstraction. In an increasingly mechanised civilisation, Pevsner and his brother Naum Gabo became part of a small group of experimental engineers, architects and painters who in 1913 united under the banner of anti-naturalism in Moscow. Their new medium was steel and not paint, whilst composition on traditional forms of canvas was replaced by construction in space.[4]
Following the start of the First World War Pevsner sought refuge from serving in the Russian imperial army by joining his brothers in Norway which, according to Alexei Pevsner, was when their notion of Constructivism was first conceived.[5] On the eve of the Russian Revolution in the spring of 1917 the siblings returned to Russia, at which time Pevsner took up a teaching position at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture. Out of the horrors of World War One, Gabo, with whom his artistic influences were shared, wrote of their inspiration that ‘I am trying to tell the world in this frustrated time of ours that there is beauty in spite of ugliness and horror. I am trying to call attention to the balanced, not the chaotic side of life – to be constructive, not destructive’.[6] Constructivism was an early twentieth-century art movement founded in around 1915 by Vladimir Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko, but was later re-established by Pevsner and Gabo in the West after the movement was supressed in Russia during the 1920s.
The foundation of the VKhUTEMAS (Higher state artistic and technical studios) in 1920 brought together three major movements in art and architecture – Constructivism, Rationalism, and Suprematism – with the intention of transforming attitudes to art in post-revolutionary Russia. Combining art with politics, efficiency and production the VKhUTEMAS sought to organize a curriculum based on contemporary artistic trends and was supported by the appointment of established master artists. One such artist was Pevsner, who was awarded a professorship. After years of war and revolution the new Soviet government were keen to show western Europe their artistic endeavours and in 1922 sent the First Russian Art Exhibition to Berlin with work from both Pevsner and Gabo included in the exhibition programme. Unfortunately, the working relationship between artists and institution was not to last. Following increased pressure from academic and official circles, the focus turned towards the proletariat resulting in an insistence on ideas centred on utilitarian and realistic art. Such a return to naturalism was, inevitably, incompatible with Pevsner’s ever developing artistic expression and professional direction.[7]
Pevsner’s antipathy to the new objectives meant that it was also in 1920 that he co-signed Gabo’s Manifeste Réaliste (Realistic Manifesto), which was to become the key text of Constructivism. Such a bold move brought the brothers into conflict with the new Russian state. Printed as a handbill the manifesto addressed five key principles: communicating the reality of life through space and time; that concepts of space are not limited to volume; to renounce colour as a pictorial element; to renounce the descriptive element in a line; and finally that the removal of imitation enables the discovery of new forms. At its core and thus underpinning these principles was that kinetic and dynamic elements expressed the real nature of time because static rhythms were insufficient.[8] Whilst Constructivism is associated with the structure of the physical universe with intellectual roots derived from modern physics, what artists present to their audience has not been seen as solely scientific but also poetic. Indeed, according to the English art historian, poet and literary critic Herbert Read, Constructivists art is the poetry of space, of time, of universal harmony, and of physical unity.[9] Pevsner himself wrote that ‘in science one is engaged directly with objective knowledge and logic. But in art this is not the case; instead, it is a feeling of passion that moves an artist – it is love, it is poetry. Those in science are involved with material things. Science foils poetry, for it is deterministic’.[10]
Pevsner’s professorial role in the Vkhutemas became untenable after the promotion of this manifesto. Moreover, the development of their new ideas in abstract art found Pevsner and Gabo associated with activism on the grounds that they were guilty of producing a type of art that had no basis in socialist realism. In both practice and principal the Communist Party condemned the modern movement in art and sought to impose the restoration of pictorial naturalism that had been favoured by the old regime. Indeed, an exhibition of their work in the centre of Moscow’s Tverskoi public garden in August 1920 resulted in accusations from the new regime of ‘Capitalist art’, and despite inclusion in the 1922 Berlin exhibition Pevsner later found his studio padlocked and his teaching terminated. In choosing to maintain the integrity of their aesthetic ideals, the brothers’ membership in the Central Soviet of Artists was withdrawn – effectively depriving them of any possibility to earn a living from their art. Both Pevsner and Gabo chose exile and possible penury over conformity to the regime.[11]
With interest in pure Constructivism having waned in the Soviet Union by 1923 Pevsner sought inspiration in Berlin, where the enthusiasm for Constructivism enabled him to begin his first construction after only nine months in the city. Pevsner returned to France in October 1923 – the country that would later become his adopted place of refuge and source of artistic emancipation. By June the following year Pevsner was exhibiting his work with Gabo at the since closed Galerie Percier in Paris. Pevsner’s contribution to Constructivist art was recognised in the catalogue for the exhibition by the Polish art historian and critic, Waldemar George, who introduced constructivism ideals as a symbolic approach to life and cited the brothers as expert craftsmen in the expression of this perspective through art. This sentiment is echoed by Read who claims ‘Pevsner’s technical skill is quite comparable to the skill of a Donatello or a Rodin [since] what varies enormously in works of art is the quality of intellectual vision’.[12]
In what Ruth Olsen describes as an ‘international constellation of artists’ we find Pevsner and Gabo as significant co-founders in the Abstraction-Création, art non-figuratif movement where they were regarded as the authority in Constructivism. It was within this creatively vibrant environment that in 1932 their manifesto was partially reprinted and translated, in which their words recalled how ‘to realise our creative life in terms of space and time: such is the unique aim of creative art’. They continued by denouncing ‘volume as an expression of space. Space can be as little measured by a volume as a liquid by a linear measure. What can space be if not an impenetrable depth? Depth is the unique form by which space can be expressed’. The translation concluded with Pevsner’s and Gabo’s assertion that ‘the elements of art have their basis in a dynamic rhythm’.[13] Pevsner’s Constructivist rationale was promoted further in 1937 following the publication of a one-off journal entitled Circle. Co-edited by his brother, Gabo, this journal published images of a number of Pevsner’s works, listed Pevsner on the title page, and hailed both brothers as ‘the leading proponents of Constructivism’.[14] Pevsner and a group of his peers extended the Abstraction-Création movement in 1946 by re-establishing the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles – a movement originally formed in 1939 by Sonia Delaunay with the objective of promoting works of art ‘commonly called concrete art, non-figurative art or abstract art’. Pevsner applied the values of the Salon and worked alongside Delaunay, Auguste Herbin, Hans Arp, and Jean Gorin to mirror the purism of abstract art originally established in Abstraction-Création.[15] Yet despite his significant footing within this art movement Pevsner remains an elusive figure in the historical record concerning the development of Constructivism. Aside from supporting evidence of his inclusion in exhibitions only basic biographical details about Pevsner appear to have survived, although quite why is not entirely clear considering his past prominence.
Indeed, Pevsner exhibited his work widely during his lifetime. In 1926, for instance, he exhibited in New York at the Little Review Gallery and at the International Exhibition of Modern Art at the Brooklyn Museum with the Société Anonyme. Pevsner’s and Gabo’s work reached new audiences when in 1927 their constructions were commissioned as set pieces in the ballet La Chatte, which was performed in Monte Carlo, London, and Ostend – with the programme clearly acknowledging both brothers’ efforts. It was through the ballet’s central figure in the décor that Pevsner completed his Cubist Constructivist period. In the years that followed, Pevsner was represented in 1935 and 1936 in exhibitions at Hartford, Connecticut, at the Chicago Arts Club, and in the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition Cubism and Abstract Art. During 1937 Pevsner exhibited at the Kunsthalle in Basel with Constructivist and Dutch de Stijl artists, and in the following year was part of a group of artists who exhibited their work together at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Pevsner’s work was also exhibited alongside contemporaries including Hans Arp, Henry Moore, and Constantin Brâncuși at an exhibition in the former Guggenheim Jeune Gallery in London whilst on a trip to visit Gabo just before the Second World War.[16] Pevsner’s success was rewarded when, in 1947, his first solo show opened at the Galerie René Drouin. A celebration of Pevsner's and Gabo's significance saw a full retrospective of their work at New York’s MoMA in 1948. Pevsner also held exhibitions and installations in the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, with the same museum organising a solo exhibition of his work in 1957. The culmination of a lifetime’s work was recognised shortly before his death in 1962 when Pevsner represented France at the 1958 Venice Bienalle.
The Guggenheim, MoMA and Tate Modern all hold major collections of Pevsner’s work. Pevsner donated a selection of his work to The Centre Pompidou in Paris before his death, leaving them as custodians of perhaps the widest range of his sculpture, drawings, and paintings. After becoming a naturalised citizen of France in May 1930, Pevsner was awarded in 1961 the Croix de Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur (National Order of the Legion of Honour, knight class) for his contribution to art.[17] Despite the individual and collective artistic achievements of both siblings Pevsner’s presence in the history and literature of Constructivism remains sparse, with Gabo’s work eclipsing that of his elder brother.
[1] Antoine Pevsner, ‘Science Foils Poetry’, Leonardo, 10:4 (1977 [originally published in French in 1959]), pp. 324-325 (p.324).
[2] Douglas Cooper, The Cubist Epoch (London: Phaidon, 1971), pp. 11, 24.
[3] Cooper, p. 12.
[4] Herbert Read, ‘Constructivism: The Art of Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner’, in Ruth Olsen and Abraham Chanin (eds.), Naum Gabo; Antoine Pevsner (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1948), pp. 7-13 (pp. 7,8).
[5] Alexei Pevsner, A Biographical Sketch of my Brothers Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner, translation Richard Scammell (Amsterdam: Augustin and Schoonman, 1964).
[6] ‘Sculpture: Plumbing the Space Age’ in Time, 22 April, 1966.
[7] Ruth Olsen, ‘Antoine Pevsner’, in Olsen and Chanin (eds.), Naum Gabo; Antoine Pevsner (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1948), pp. 51-57 (pp.53-55).
[8] https://www.greyscape.com/architects/antoine-pevsner-constructivist-a-lifetime-of-experimentation/ (accessed 05/07/2024); https://thecharnelhouse.org/2015/02/22/naum-gabo-and-antoine-pevsner/ (accessed 03/08/2024); Read, ‘Constructivism’, in Olsen and Chanin (eds.), Naum Gabo; Antoine Pevsner, p. 10.
[9] Read, ‘Constructivism’, in Olsen and Chanin (eds.), Naum Gabo; Antoine Pevsner, p.11.
[10] Pevsner, ‘Science Foils Poetry’, Leonardo, p.324.
[11] Read, ‘Constructivism’, in Olsen and Chanin (eds.), Naum Gabo; Antoine Pevsner, p. 9.
[12] Olsen, ‘Antoine Pevsner’, in Olsen and Chanin (eds.), Naum Gabo; Antoine Pevsner, p. 55; Read, ‘Constructivism’, in Olsen and Chanin (eds.), Naum Gabo; Antoine Pevsner, p. 11.
[13] Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner in Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves, Artists on Art (New York: Pantheon Books, 1945), pp. 454-455.
[14] Olsen, ‘Antoine Pevsner’, in Olsen and Chanin (eds.), Naum Gabo; Antoine Pevsner, p. 57; J.L. Martin, Ben Nicholson, Naum Gabo (eds.), Circle: International Survey of Constructivist Art (1937), p. 308.
[15] http://www.realitesnouvelles.org/site_2020/intro.htm (accessed 03/08/2024)
[16] Olsen, ‘Antoine Pevsner’, in Olsen and Chanin (eds.), Naum Gabo; Antoine Pevsner, pp. 55-57.
[17] https://www.greyscape.com/architects/antoine-pevsner-constructivist-a-lifetime-of-experimentation/ (accessed 29.06.2024)