He attended art school in Riga under Vilhelms Purvītis, thus initially adapting the style of impressionist painting,[2] and first came to Moscow in 1914.

[4] 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.

He travelled across Russia, to Kazakhstan Ural, Altai and Armenia creating a series of artworks of the Soviet landscape.

On 17 January 1938, during the Great Purge, as a part of the so-called "Latvian Operation", Drevin was arrested by the NKVD and executed on 26 February at the Butovo firing range near Moscow.