Alexander Drevin and Nadezhda Udaltsova. Painting, graphics

Alexander Drevin (1889-1938) – is a painter, a graphic artist and a teacher. Coming from a Latvian-German family, Drevin studied in Riga - first at a nautical school, then at an art school. As one of the leaders of the Russian avant-garde, he participated in many art associations: "The green flower", "The world of art", "The knave of diamonds", "The thirteen" and others. Drevin's paintings were exhibited at the First Russian Art Exhibition in Berlin (1922), at 14th Biennale in Venice (1924).

In his early works, one can see his search in the direction of post-impressionism, primitivism, rayonism where the artist creates both non-objective abstractions and figurative works. Later the master turns to landscapes and portraits in a more expressive manner.

The result of numerous creative trips to Altai, the Urals, Armenia, Kazakhstan in the 30s being the landscapes in which Drevin's interest in the picturesque issues of color, its saturation, texture is manifested. The works are subject to harsh criticism for its formalism. In 1938, Alexander Drevin was shot on a trumped-up charge related to the activities of the Latvian cultural and educational society "Prometheus".

"Drevin's painting is a chronicle of futile attempts to get used to the world."

New Newspaper

A daughter of a tsarist officer, the future "Amazon of the Russian avant-garde" Nadezhda Udaltsova (1886-1961) studied at private Moscow studios and the Parisian academy "Le Palette". Her early work clearly showed her fascination with the "isms" of the beginning of the last century - cubism, suprematism, impressionism. Together with her husband Alexander Drevin she worked at the People's Commissariat of Education, taught at the Higher Art and Technical studios and at the Institute of arts and culture. The trips made in the 30s helped Udaltsova to develop a restrained, but dynamic expressionism, peculiar in color and mood.

In the late, "quiet" period of her creativity Udaltsova, being already in the status of the wife of an enemy of the people, but not knowing about his death, continued to work. The more tragic were the realistic flowers and fruits of the late period of the Russian avant-gardist.

“In their best works, the spouses achieved a deafening effect - the connection of human consciousness with the wild nature, which has already ceased to be a native home, but still allows one to feel its true greatness. If you look for analogies, you can recall the writings of Andrey Platonov - more precisely, those pages where characters indulge in reflections about the place of homo sapiens in the Universe.

Newspaper.ru

Drevin A. D. "Landscape with a Horse. Altai", 1932