Aleksandra Ekster

One of the most experimental women of the avant-garde

Prof. Francesco Carelli, University of Milan

oil painting on canvas

Aleksandra Aleksandrovna Ekster (1882 – 1949), was also known as Alexandra

Exter. As a young woman, her studio in Kiev attracted all the city’s creative
luminaries, and she became a figure of the Paris salons, mixing with Picasso, Braque
and others. She is identified with the Russian/Ukrainian avant-garde, as a Cubo-
futurist, Constructivist and influencer of the Art Deco movement.

In 1908, Aleksandra Grigorovich married a successful Kiev lawyer, Nikolai

Evgenyevich Ekster. The Eksters belonged to cultural and intellectual elite of Kiev.
She spent several months with her husband in Paris, and there she attended
Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Montparnasse. From 1908 to 1924, she
intermittently lived in Kiev, St. Petersburg, Odessa, Paris, Rome and Moscow.
Her painting studio in the attic at 27 Funduklievskaya Street, now Khmelnytsky
Street, was a rallying stage for Kiev's intellectual elite. In the attic in her studio
there worked future luminaries of world decorative art Vadim Meller, Anatole
Petrytsky and P. Tchelitchew . There she was visited by poets and writers, such as
Anna Akhmatova, Ilia Ehrenburg, and Osip Mandelstam, dancers Bronislava
Nijinska and Elsa Kruger, as well as many artists Alexander Bogomazov, Wladimir
Baranoff-Rossine, and students, such as Grigori Kozintsev, Sergei Yutkevich, and
Aleksei Kapler among many others. In 1908, she participated in an exhibition
together with members of the group Zveno (Link) organized by David Burliuk,
Wladimir Burliuk and others in Kiev.

In Paris, Aleksandra Ekster became personally acquainted with Pablo Picasso and
Georges Braque, who introduced her to Gertrude Stein.

Under the name Alexandra d'Exter she exhibited six works at the Salon de la Section
d'Or, Galerie La Boétie, Paris, October 1912, with Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes,
Marcel Duchamp and others.

In 1914, Exter participated in the Salon des Indépendants exhibitions in Paris,

together with Kazimir Malevich, Alexander Archipenko, Vadym Meller, Sonia
Delaunay-Terk and other French and Russian artists. In that same year, she
participated with the "Russians" Archipenko, Koulbine and Rozanova in the
International Futurist Exhibition in Rome. In 1915, she joined the group of avant-
garde artists Supremus. Her friends introduced her to the poet Apollinaire, who
took her to Picasso's workshop. According to Moscow Chamber Theatre actress
Alice Coonen, "In [Ekster's] Parisian household there was a conspicuous peculiar
combination of European culture with Ukrainian life. On the walls between Picasso
and Braque paintings, there was Ukrainian embroidery; on the floor was an
Ukrainian carpet, at the table they served clay pots, colorful majolica plates of
dumplings."

Under the avant-garde umbrella, Ekster has been noted to be a suprematist and
constructivist painter as well as a major influencer of the Art Deco movement.
While not confined within a particular movement, Ekster was one of the most
experimental women of the avant-garde. Ekster absorbed from many sources
and cultures in order to develop her own original style. In 1915–1916, she worked
in the peasant craft cooperatives in the villages Skoptsi and Verbovka along with
Kazimir Malevich, Yevgenia Pribylskaya, Liubov Popova, Ivan Puni, Olga
Rozanova, Nadezhda Udaltsova and others. Ekster later founded a teaching
and production workshop (MDI) in Kiev (1918–1920). V adym Meller, Anatol
Petrytsky, Kliment Red'ko, Tchelitchew, Shifrin, Nikritin worked there. Also
during this period she was one of the leading stage designers of Alexander Tairov's
Chamber Theatre.
In 1919, together with other avant-garde artists Kliment Red'ko and Nina Genke-
Meller, she decorated the streets and squares of Kiev and Odessa in abstract style
for Revolution Festivities. She worked with Vadym Meller as a costume designer in
a ballet studio of the dancer Bronislava Nijinska.

In 1921, she became a director of the elementary course Color at the Higher Artistic-
Technical Workshop ( VKhUTEMAS ) in Moscow, a position she held until 1924.
Her work was displayed alongside that of other Constructivist artists at the 5x5=25
exhibition held in Moscow in 1921.

In line with her eclectic avant-garde-like style, Ekster's early paintings strongly
influenced her costume design as well as her book illustrations, which are scarcely
noted. All of Ekster's works, no matter the medium, stick to her distinct style. Her
works are vibrant, playful, dramatic, and theatrical in composition, subject matter,
and color. Ekster constantly stayed true to her composition aesthetic across all
mediums. Furthermore, each medium only enhanced and influenced her work in
other mediums.

With her assimilation of many different genres, her essential futurist and cubist ideas
were always in tandem with her attention to colour and rhythm. Ekster uses many
elements of geometric compositions, which reinforce the core intentions of
dynamism, vibrant contrasts, and free brushwork. Ekster stretched the dynamic
intentions of her work across all mediums. Ekster's theatrical works such as
sculptures, costume design, set design, and decorations for the revolutionary
festivals, strongly reflect her work with geometric elements and vibrant intentions.
Through her costume work, she experimented with the transparency, movement, and
vibrancy of fabrics. Ekster's movement of her brushstroke in her artwork is
reflected in the movement of the fabric in her costumes. Ekster's theatrical sets used
multi-coloured dimensions and experimented with spatial structures. She continued
with these experimental tendencies in her later puppet designs. With her
experimentation across many mediums, Ekster started to take the concept of her
costume designing and integrate it into everyday life. In 1921, Ekster's work in
fashion design began. Though her mass production designs were wearable, most of
her fashion design was highly decorative and innovative, usually falling under the
category of haute couture.

In 1923, she continued her work in many media in addition to collaborating with
Vera Mukhina and Boris Gladkov in Moscow on the decor of the All Russian
Exhibition pavilions.

In 1924, Aleksandra Ekster and her husband emigrated to France and settled in Paris,
where she initially became a professor at the Academie Moderne. From 1926 to
1930, Ekster was a professor at Fernand Léger's Académie d'Art Contemporain.
In 1933, she began creating beautiful and original illuminated manuscripts
(gouache on paper), perhaps the most important works of the last phase of her life.
The "Callimaque" manuscript ( c. 1939, the text being a French translation of a hymn
by Hellenistic poet Callimachus ) is widely regarded as her masterpiece. In 1936,
she participated in the exhibition Cubism and Abstract Art in New York and went
on to have solo exhibitions in Prague and in Paris. She was a book illustrator for the
publishing company Flammarion in Paris from 1936 until her death in the Paris
suburb of Fontenay-aux-Roses.

Photo: oil painting on canvas