Katarzyna Kobro was born in Moscow in 1898. She came from a well-to-do Latvian-Russian family residing in Riga. She was the daughter of shipowner Mikolaj Kobro and Eugenia née Rozanow. She graduated from the 3rd Warsaw Girls' Gymnasium (evacuated from Warsaw due to the war). In 1917, she began studying sculpture at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Construction, which in 1918 became the State Free Art Studios. During her studies, she met leading representatives of the Russian avant-garde and maintained contact with the constructivist-productivist group OBMOCHU (Objedinienije Molodych Chudoznikov). It was also during this time that she met Wladyslaw Strzeminski, with whom she soon decided to move to Smolensk, where she taught spat...