Nikolaus Pevsner (January 30, 1902 - August 18, 1983) was a German-born British historian of art and, especially, architecture.

The son of a Jewish merchant, Pevsner was born in Leipzig, Saxony. He studied art history at the Universities of Leipzig, Munich, Berlin, and Frankfurt/Main in Germany (PhD 1924), worked at the Dresden Gallery (1924-28) and taught at Göttingen University (1929–33). In 1934, he moved to England to escape Nazism and taught at London, Oxford, and Cambridge Universities.

He is best known for his 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, The Buildings of England (1951–74), one of the great achievements of 20th-century art scholarship.

Pevsner conceived and edited the Pelican History of Art series (1953– ), many individual volumes of which are regarded as classics.

He died in London.

Selected bibliography

Academies of Art, Past and Present (1940)
An Outline of European Architecture (1943)
Pioneers of Modern Design (1949; originally published in 1936 under the title Pioneers of the Modern Movement)
The Buildings of England (1951-74)
The Englishness of English Art (1956)
The Sources of Modern Architecture and Design (1968)
A History of Building Types (1976)

External link

Nikolaus Pevsner (1902-1983)