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WOMAN WITH A BIRD

86.5 by 108cm., 33 3/4 by 42in.

signed feintly l.r.

oil on canvas

PROVENANCE

The family of the artist's brother, Naum Gabo, until 1988;
Christie's, 29th November 1988, Lot 234;
Toninelli Art Moderne, Monaco until 2003;
Fondation Yosano, Liechtenstein

EXHIBITED

Koblenz: Ludwig Museum, Treffpunkt Paris! Russlands Künstler zwischen Cézannismus und Lyrischer abstraktion, 5th September - 23rd November 2003
Geneva: Salon de Mars, 2002

LITERATURE

Ex. Cat. Treffpunkt Paris! Russlands Künstler zwischen Cézannismus und Lyrischer Abstraktion, Ludwig Museum, 2003, p.76 (illustrated)

NOTE

The Russian artist and sculptor Antoine Pevsner (Natan Abramovich Pevsner) was an important theoretician of Constructivism. He proclaimed its ideas in the Realistic Manifesto, published together with his brother Naum Gabo in 1920. After the October Revolution Pevsner taught at the Moscow Academy of Fine Arts along with Vassily Kandinsky and Kazimir Malevich until his emigration to France in 1923. Woman with a Bird was created in 1911 at the time of World War I, when Pevsner stayed in Norway. Not a long before then he had returned from his second trip to Paris where he had befriended Amedeo Modigliani and Alexander Archipenko who encouraged the artist's interest in Cubism.

The imagery of Woman with a Bird created in this turbulent time suggests a harmonious and elemental relationship between mankind and nature. The woman's figure curls above the bird as if to protect it. The composition is lyrical and yet dynamic as its stylised forms swirl clockwise. This painting is a rare figurative example of Pevsner's oeuvre as he mostly created abstract compositions and worked in sculpture.