Jean Pougny (1892-1956)

The abstract drawings that Jean Pougny (Iwan Puni) executed in Petrograd between 1915 and 1919 are exceedingly rare. This drawing is one of a small remaining number of these Suprematist and Constructivist works after many were lost when the artist fled from the Soviet Union in 1920 and others were destroyed by humidity in storage in Paris in the 1920s. Only a few were saved when the artist's wife, the original owner of this work, brought them with her as she fled Russia over the Bay of Finland during the winter of 1919/1920.

Most of the Petrograd drawings bear later signatures, dates and inscriptions by the artist and his wife. These were generally added when the drawings were included in exhibitions and also as a memory aid for Pougny: as they were often preparatory drawings for sculptures, they served as souvenirs of sculptures he had been forced to leave behind in the Soviet Union.