The Russian constructivist sculptor and painter Antoine Pevsner (1886-1962) was one of the founders of the ultramodern abstract school in Moscow in the 1920s. His art is severely geometrical, elegant, intellectual, and uncompromising.

Antoine Pevsner was born on Jan. 18, 1886, in Orel, the son of a copper refinery executive. He and his two brothers, Alexei and Naum, were interested in science and specialized in engineering in school. Antoine and Naum (who took the surname Gabo) then turned to art. Pevsner studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kiev (1908-1910) and in St. Petersburg (1911). In Moscow he saw the collections of impressionist, Fauve, and cubist art which belonged to Ivan Morosov and Sergei Stchoukine (Shchukin).

In 1912 Pevsner went to Paris, where he saw the cubist art of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Alexander Archipenko. Pevsner began to paint in 1913. With the outbreak of World War I he joined Gabo...