[Маруся]

I wrote it was a message about Tatlin, but remembered that this year 120 years since the birth of Alexander Drevin.

Here I have kept this autobiography:
(while I'm looking for pictures, who could complement)

Born 3 /VI /1889 in the town of Wenden used. Lifland province (now Latvia). City Wenden is located in the so-called Livonian Switzerland; there and spent early childhood up to six years.
Neighborhood Wenden carved with deep ravines, beautiful deep the length of the river Gauja. I remember sledding in the mountains, beautiful roads hearse, going down in length, the rocky shores of the river; Wenden himself all stone, white stone houses, around the mass of the gardens.
When I was six years old, my father in Pisco better earnings moved to Riga, where he soon entered one of the factories of Riga.
Outskirts of the city of Riga, where the workers' quarters, completely devoid of vegetation, instead of which are black slag everywhere wasteland and blank walls of plants.
The contrast with Wenden was so great that imprinted in me forever. This corresponded to a new environment and change our lives.
The hardships of life of my parents, their constant anxiety for his life could not affect me. The influence of the street on which my parents were busy working, they could not protect me, it was hard, especially in the outskirts of Riga, and their apashestvo all know, but some self-preservation instinct stopped me in the decisive moments.
After graduating from something as elementary school, I follow a dream of my childhood, entered the Nautical School.
Among my friends, where there were quite a few hooligans, were conscious revolutionary workers, who dragged me into their midst, giving me certain instructions. I served them, often without knowing where its origin.
In 1906 I was arrested. Nightmarish reaction in the Baltic region, where the victims fell, most of my friends made me leave at the time of Riga.
I went to the Smolensk province, where he stayed for six months.
In 1907, the fall, I returned to school. Among my friends was one who was engaged in a little painting. This is a newer hobby so captured me that I forgot the Maritime School, and began to sketch from nature, without guidance, as my companion was also a beginner, and none of the artists we did not know. I was then 19 years old, I knew nothing about painting and have not seen a single picture.
In autumn 1908 I went with a friend in Riga Art School, whose director was an artist Purve. In school, I knew the Impressionists.
In 1914 I was evacuated with his parents in Moscow, where we settled for Butyrskaya Gate and where I began to work independently.
D 1917, I was not familiar with Russian artists, entirely brought up at a meeting of Shchukin.
The rapprochement with the Russian artists who came after the 9 th Latvian infantry regiment raised me on social work in the Latvian National Commissioner, at the same time I took part in the exhibition in the Kremlin hosted by arrows, where I put primitives and non-figurative work.
After the 1-th exhibition of the Union of Artists of Moscow, where I first put up with Russian artists, VE Tatlin invited me to the Department of Fine Arts, where I worked until 1920.
In 1920 I was invited to the first public workshop, where he worked until the close VKhUTEMAS.
Since 1923, I returned to painting from nature. During this time mnyu written sketches near Moscow, the Urals, Altai.
Altai particularly influenced me with their colorful nature, big spaces, his extraordinary intensity changed my life.
Since the autumn of 1933 I again started to work hard in the field of landscape and returned to nature.
(As amended V. Starodumova Materials RGALI)
....
Executed in 1938.