Antoine Pevsner

First and foremost let us say Happy Birthday to Dr. Martin Luther KingJr.! American civil rights activist who was shot down before he could realize his dream for our country.



Happy Birthday Antoine Pevsner! Russian sculptor born in 1886, Antoine Pevsner was the older brother to Naum Gabo. Eventually Pevsner moved to Paris, becoming a French citizen. Both men were front runners of modern sculpture, Constructivists, advancing sculpture into welded metal kinesthetic structures. Pevsner was first to use the blowtorch for his work. Pictured below we see one of Pevsner’s works from 1933 currently displayed in the Guggenheim in New York. The Anchored Cross is fabricated from painted brass and crystal, 33 1/2 inches in length diagonally. Constructivism rejected the idea of “art for art’s sake”, but used art as a vehicle for social consciousness. They founded the publication Realist Manifesto in 1920.


Realistic Manifesto: A publication written by Pevsner and Gabo, detailing their artistic theories that art should be separated from conventions such as line, form, color, etc. “The plumb-line in our hand, eyes as precise as a ruler, in a spirit as taut as a compass . . . we construct our work as the universe constructs its own, as the engineer constructs his bridges, as the mathematician his formula of the orbits.” Believing art must be a part of all aspects of every man’s life: "at the workbench, at the office, at work, at rest, and at leisure; work days and holidays, at home and on the road, so that the flame of life does not go out in man." Their works were constructed from contemporary industrial materials.