A prominent Russian sculptor in the Constructivism movement and a pioneer of Kinetic Art.

Born Naum Pevsner, he grew up in a Jewish family but changed his name to avoid confusion with his fellow Constructivist artist brother Antoine. While studying engineering in Munich in 1912, he discovered abstract art and met Wassily Kandinsky. After joining his brother in Paris, his engineering knowledge contributed to the development of his sculptural work that often used machined elements. During WWI he worked in Oslo but moved back to Russia in 1917, where he began to experiment with Kinetic sculpture. With Antoine, he proclaimed the tenets of pure Constructivism in 1920. In Germany, he came into contact with the artists of the de Stijl and taught at the Bauhaus in 1928. To escape the rise of Nazism, the pair stayed in Paris in 1932-5 as members of the Abstraction-Creation group with Piet Mondrian. With the coming of WWII, he settled in St. Ives in Cornwall with his friends Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson. In 1946, he emigrated to the USA.