(b Venden [now Cesis], Latvia, 3 July 1889; d Altay Region, 1938). Latvian painter, active in Russia. His father was Latvian and his mother German. In 1904 he enrolled at the Art School in Riga where he studied under Vil’gel’m-Karl Purvit until 1913. The following year the family moved to Moscow where he involved himself in avant-garde artistic movements as well as revolutionary political activity, for which he had already been arrested in Riga. In 1918 he exhibited several abstract works and his cycle Refugees. Between 1919 and 1921 he worked at Svomas, Vkhutemas and other experimental studios. In 1922 his paintings were shown in the Erste russische Kunstausstellung in Berlin and Amsterdam. He exhibited with former members of the Jack of Diamonds group in 1923 and with DMKh, the Society of Moscow Artists (1927–32). He was married to NADEZHDA UDAL’TSOVA and together they held exhibitions at the Russian Museum, Leningrad (1928) and the State Cultural and Historical Museum, Erevan (1934). Drevin had made enemies among his fellow artists, and his early political activities and membership of the Red Latvian Kremlin Riflemen who formed part of Lenin’s personal bodyguard told against him. He was arrested and sent into enforced exile in the Altay region, where he died in 1938.

• Drevin, Aleksandr (Davidovich)
  • Russia, §IV, 3(i): Painting, graphic arts and sculpture, 1917–56
  • Udal’tsova, Nadezhda
  • Vkhutemas
  • groups and movements
    • Riga Artists’ group
  • pupils
    • Semashkevich, Roman