At first glance, this painting is incomprehensible. What am I looking at? Explosions? Complete chaos? Are buildings and bridges breaking away from their foundations?
An intense light emanating from the center of the picture seems to be coming from the headlights of cars making their way down a steep hill. In the shadows, I can just barely pick out tall buildings and colorful billboards. Ahh, now I understand. I’m looking at Kyiv from above, like a drone camera would.
Alexandra Exter painted City at Night in the attic studio of her home at 27 Funduklievskaya Street. From this perch she could watch sedans and street lamps illuminate a city basking in the glow of a new sports stadium, a new National Music Academy, a new national library, even a new zoo. Kyiv in 1913 was fast becoming one of Europe’s most modern cities.
Exter so loved to paint cities at night. Everything somehow naturally became unified and transformed, reflected in each other: old architecture illuminated by electric light, the glare of headlights reflecting on old sidewalks, advertisements on centuries-old walls, the smooth surface of canals criss-crossed by triangles of light.
Art historian Georgy Kovalenko, 2013
A few years earlier, Exter paid a visit to Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque in their Paris studio to see the new style of painting they were developing — soon to be called Cubism — which one critic called “not so bad as it seems at first glance.”
She liked their revolutionary approach to rendering reality, but not their dour color palette of browns and grays because for Exter color was everything.
Asya (Alexandra) executed a number of Cubist pieces that were masterful but inwardly cold. One of the Cubists’ principles was to modulate the scale of colours, and this inhibited her violent, colourist temperament.
Benedikt Livshits, “The One and a Half-Eyed Archer,” 1933
So Exter combined Cubism’s strong interest in geometric forms and multiple viewpoints with Futurism’s colorful celebration of modern urban life. This integration of styles became known as Cubo-Futurism.
The Futurists believed technology would create a more equitable life for all people regardless of class because machines would liberate us from the shackles of the past. In Futurist paintings, objects morph into geometric shapes imbued with machine symbolism. Their landscapes look like the flickering colors seen through the windows of a speeding car.
Umberto Boccioni, the Italian artist who helped forge the aesthetic of Futurism, placed complementary colors side by side: red and green, yellow and purple, blue and orange, chartreuse and magenta. His approach still feels fresh today.
His contemporary Robert Delaunay believed color alone could create the illusion of depth and volume on a flat surface without relying on linear perspective and chiaroscuro — techniques developed during the 15th century. Delaunay spoke frequently (and maybe a little over-optimistically) about the potential of complementary colors to create volume and space:
I attach great importance to observing the movement of complementary colors. Simultaneous contrast is a honey of a technique. It creates visible depth without the old craft.
Exter often visited Delaunay in Paris, where he shared an art studio with his wife Sonia Delaunay-Terk, who was born in the area now known as Ukraine. Like the Delaunays, Exter often structured her paintings according to Chevreul’s Theory of color, an artistic milestone published in 1839 as The Law of Simultaneous Color Contrast.
The Great War disrupts artistic ambitions
During World War I (1914-1918), Exter converted her attic studio into a classroom for art students. At night, her home became a hangout for Kyiv’s creative elite, including Bronislawa Nijinskaja, a choreographer who invited her to collaborate on a new ballet.
Exter’s avant-garde style also caught the eye of Alexander Tairov, a director determined to disrupt every aspect of theater production — acting, staging, costume design. The elements he found most challenging were visual, so he invited her to join his production team.
In a theater setting, Exter found it easy to expand the limits of Cubist painting. She replaced flat, trompe l’oeil scenery with three-dimensional sets. She designed colorful, geometric planes that move in sync with the drama. And she accentuated pivotal pieces of clothing with color, wire, and padding to give actors new ways to be expressive.
Her modernist vision captured the peculiar spirit of the time.
Alexandra Exter responded with exceptional sensitivity to the dynamic element of the theater. From the point of view of verisimilitude, her designs may seem stylized, but in fact they are more truly real because theater is art.
Alexander Tairov, “Notes of a Director,” 1921
The Treaty of Versailles in 1919 ended much of the violence of World War I. However, Ukrainian lands east of the Polish border were soon annexed by the newly formed Soviet Union, ending a certain tolerance for modern artists in the region. Lenin and Stalin despised the avant-garde, whom they considered elitist agents of change.
Exter moved permanently to Paris, where she became a college professor with help from artist Fernand Léger.
Alexandra Exter was nearly forgotten during the post-war years….
….but she is enjoying a resurgence today. The value of her work is increasing. So, naturally, is the number of forgeries. Art historians will have to sort it all out, and it is well worth their time. Alexandra Exter is one of the stars of European modernism. It’s time to bring her in from the margins of art history, where far too many women still languish.
Postscript: How to see more Ukrainian works of art
You can enjoy works of art by Alexandra Exter and many other Ukrainian artists by taking a virtual tour of In the Eye of the Storm at the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum in Madrid. Moving these masterworks out of Ukraine wasn’t easy, what with Russian missiles flying overhead. But this is one way Ukrainians can safeguard their artistic heritage.
