Aleksandra Ekster

Aleksandra Ekster – Wikipedia

Aleksandra Ekster ~ A founder of the Art Déco

Aleksandra Aleksandrovna Ekster (1882-1949) cubo-futurist, suprematist, constructivist and designer is one of most famous Russian Avant Garde female painters that gained international recognition. She was a multi talented artist – a painter, ceramist, graphic artist, clothes designer. Alexandra Ekster would also become a co-founder of the Art Deco. In Paris, Aleksandra Ekster was a personal friend of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, who introduced her to Gertrude Stein. In 1914, Ekster 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. In 1924, Aleksandra Ekster and her husband emigrated to France and settled in Paris. Initially she became a Professor at the Academie der Moderne in Paris. From 1926 to 1930 Ekster was a professor at Fernand Léger’s Académie d’Art Contemporain.

In 1933 she began creating extremely beautiful and original illuminated manuscripts (gouache on paper), which are beyond doubt 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. During the past few decades her reputation has increased dramatically, as have the prices of her works. As a consequence, hundreds of fakes have appeared on the market in recent years, and virtually all of the recent monographs on Exter were published for the sole purpose of making such fakes appear to be authentic.