Drevin was born 15 July 1889 was born in
Cēsis,
Governorate of Livonia (present-day Latvia). Drevin attended art school in
Riga under
Vilhelms Purvītis, thus initially adapting the style of
impressionist painting, and first came to Moscow in 1914. He studied under
Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. Since 1917 he worked in the Fine Arts Department of the People's Commissariat of Education. Drevin was part of the "
Green Flower" association of avant-garde artists, notably with
Konrāds Ubāns,
Valdemārs Tone and
Kārlis Johansons. Between 1920 and 1921 he was a member of the Inkhuk but later left, together with
Wassily Kandinsky,
Kliunkov, and
Nadezhda Udaltsova, because of the Constructivist-Productivist stylistic manifesto urging the rejection of
easel painting. Drevin became a professor of painting at
Vkhutemas. In 1922, he was sent to work the
First Russian Art Exhibition at the Van Diemen Gallery in Berlin. He travelled across
Russia, to
Kazakhstan Ural, Altai and
Armenia creating a series of artworks of the Soviet landscape. These trips where organised and supervised by Soviet art officials. ==Arrest and execution==