OLEKSANDRA EKSTER [ALEXANDRA EXTER]

Alexandra Exter is a famous international avant-garde artist who lived in Kyiv for more than 35 years. There she finished Saint Olga Gymnasium, studied at Kyiv Art Institute, got married to Mykola Exter and lived with her husband and his parents on Himnazychna street,1 (now Leontovycha street), where she opened a painting workshop. Vadym Meller, Anatol Petrytsky, Oleksandr Tyshler, Oleksandr Khvostenko-Khvostov, Isaak Rabinovich, Klyment Redko were among the visitors and students of this workshop that, together with Alexandra Exter, had a huge influence on the artistic life of the city. Oleksandr Bohomazov and Alexandra Exter organized in Kyiv some of the first new art exhibitions in Russian empire, the famous Kiltse and Lanka. According to Anna Akhmatova, all the left artist in Kyiv came from Exter’s workshop and contemporary researchers claim that Ukrainian avant-garde scenography originates from Ester’s theatre.

In Kyiv Alexandra Exter worked with Bronislava Nijinska’s School of Movement and was a co-curator and exposition designer of the folk art exhibition at today’s National Art Museum in 1906. She was also focused on researching and uniting folk art with avant-garde, local artisans with modernists by working with peasant workshops like Natalia Davydova’s in Verbivka and Anastasia Semyhradova’s and Yevhenia Prybylska’s in Skoptsi. As a scenographer she created hundreds of plays that along with her other works helped her to gain worldwide recognition. When Exter moved to France in 1924 she worked in fashion as well and created some textiles, interiors, etc. “She traveled a lot and lived in Paris and Moscow, Rome and Saint-Petersburg for a long time. But she always used to come back to Kyiv: her home, her workshop, her famous studio were here. And when she had to leave her hometown forever, she designed her Parisian house exactly the same as the one in Kyiv. There were lots of bright Ukrainian kilims, embroideries, Ukrainian ceramics, Ukrainian icons” – writes Georgy Kovalenko, long-term researcher of Exter and also Kyiv native.

Monograph "OLEKSANDRA EKSTER" ("ALEXANDRA EXTER") by Georgy Kovalenko.

Design: Grafprom Studio

Translation: Maria Panchenko

Editor: Yaryna Tsymbal