Footnotes

PROVENANCE
Alisa Koonen, Moscow
N.S. Sukhotsky, Moscow
A.A. Chizhov, Moscow
Acquired from the above by the present owner

LITERATURE
Georgy Kovalenko, Alexandra Exter, Museum of Modern Art, Moscow, 2010, illus. p.249

Alexandra Alexandrovna Exter (1882-1949) was one of several prominent women to partake in the Russian avant-garde movement. A truly international artist, Exter attended art school in Kiev in 1906, before moving to Paris in 1908 to pursue her artistic education at the Académie de la Grand Chaumiere, later opening a studio there and meeting, among others, the renowned masters Picasso, Braque, and Apollinaire. Exter continued to travel between Paris, Moscow and Kiev throughout her career, becoming a significant influence on the spreading of Cubist and Futurist ideas among the Russian avant-garde via her organisation of numerous exhibitions and salons in Kiev, Odessa, St. Petersburg, and Moscow (Christina Lodder, Alexandra Exter, Oxford University Press, 2009).

In 1916, Exter joined Aleksandr Tairov's Kamerny Theater in Moscow as a costume and set designer. Exter understood costumes as one of the critical components of overall stage design. She rendered them as three-dimensional sculptures that served as key elements in the overall sculptural environment of the set, helping to shape the space of the stage. This principal was particularly evident in the 1921 production of Romeo and Juliet. As is typical for Exter, 'Costume Design for Romeo' utilizes a geometrical arrangement of individual shapes and carefully delineated colours to create the sense of an object that exists in real space. The importance of Cubism and Futurism to Exter's style is particularly evident in 'Romeo', as is her particular ability to conceptualize rhythm and colour in a three-dimensional form (Georgy Kovalenko, Alexandra Exter: Monograph, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Moscow, 2010).

The art critic Iakov Tugendkhold (1882-1928) wrote of Exter's designs: 'the costumes in Romeo and Juliet were built on the same leitmotif: a wave-like Baroque line that spun in a spiral of feathers on hats and shoulders of cloaks. Here are the tenderly noble costumes of the eternal lovers: raspberry for Romeo and lemon-pink for Juliet, and in opposition to them, the sumptuous, sonorous, vivid, grotesque exaggeration of all the other characters, the witnesses of the "sad tale"' (Georgy Kovalenko, ibid). 'Costume Design for Romeo' is a striking example of Exter's unique ability to render a sketch into a functional form, one that exists beautifully not only its own space but serves as a reminder of its origin as one component of an elaborate theatre production.