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Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
ANTOINE PEVSNER Christiania.
Pencil on heavy cream wove paper, 1917. 435x380 mm; 17 1/8x15 inches. Signed, initialed, titled and dated in pencil, lower recto.
Sold Drouot-Richelieu, Paris, October 27, 2001, lot 45; private collection, Israel.
Considered a pioneer of 20th centruy abstract sculpture, Pevsner (1886-1962) studied art in Kiev and St. Petersburg before traveling to Paris where he was introduced to Cubism. While he was a painter working with a Cubist approach during his early career, in 1920 he co-signed the Realistic Manifesto, which rejected Cubism and Futurism and argued that art should be abstract but embrace the reality of space and time (an argument similar to Constructivism). In 1923 he settled in Paris and started to create sculpture in the manner outlined in the manifesto. He developed a technique to solder bronze wire together to form plates in order to build rather than cast his sculptures. The Developable Surface Series is his best known work, which examined volume of form and its relationship with light, movement and spatial perception. His work pushed sculptors to consider space and form as the material and subject matter of sculpture in its own right.
