Alexandra Exter: The Stage Is a World

The Ukrainian Museum, New York, is proud to announce Alexandra Exter: The Stage Is a World, opened on September 27, 2024. The exhibition presents 40 works—including paintings, works on paper and costumes—in the first solo presentation of Exter’s work in North America.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and First Lady Olena Zelenska officially opened the exhibition with a tour, led by Ukrainian Museum Director Peter Doroshenko on September 23, 2024. The exhibition underscores Exter’s significance as an artist and as a symbol of Ukrainian cultural heritage. A collaboration with Ukrainian and US museums and international collectors, The Stage Is a World offers a comprehensive exploration of Exter’s pioneering career from 1916 to 1930, highlighting her early abstractions as well as her avant-garde theater and film contributions.

Dubbed the “avant-garde Amazon,” Exter was a stalwart of the European artistic elite, traversing Kyiv, Odesa, Paris, and Venice. Her work spanned painting, the graphic arts, book design, fashion, theater, and cinema, and evolved through movements including cubism, constructivism, and art deco. By infusing her work with a vibrant palette and rhythmic compositions inspired by Ukrainian folk art, Exter played a pivotal role in fostering appreciation for this tradition among her European peers. Exter would also become a conduit for the transmission of new artistic currents back and forth between Kyiv and Paris. In Paris, Exter immersed herself in the burgeoning art scene, befriending luminaries including Pablo Picasso and Fernand Léger, while embracing Cubism infused with dynamic color. Her apartment and studio emerged as epicenters of avant-garde activity, shaping the trajectory of art history.  

Though she assimilated both the Supremacist and the Cubo-Futurist style popular among her friends Malevich, Picasso, Apollinaire and Braque, Exter’s instantly-recognizable work toyed with a colour, rhythm and theatricality all her own. Her years spent working with theatres, she electrified audiences with her Modernist sets and sculptural costumes, were to inform her art for life, while her stage and costume design incorporated a variety of textured industrial materials—aluminum, glass, acrylics, steel, etc.—to create high contrast Cubo-Futurist effects that mirrored her art.

Despite periods of obscurity, Exter’s legacy endured, regaining attention with a 1972 posthumous exhibition in Paris. Yet, her rightful place in abstract painting history and her Ukrainian identity remain underrecognized. Alexandra Exter: The Stage Is a World aims to restore Exter’s rightful Ukrainian context and reclaim her identity, and is a long overdue critical examination of Alexandra Exter’s groundbreaking art that will present rarely seen works, as well as some of Exter’s archetypal paintings.

Alexandra Exter was a bright figure in the European avant-garde movement. Born in Białystok (now part of Poland), her family soon relocated to Kyiv, Ukraine, where she studied at the Kyiv Art School with Oleksandr Bohomazov and Alexander Archipenko, both of whom played pivotal roles in shaping the Ukrainian avant-garde. Exter’s artistic practice was remarkably diverse, encompassing oil painting, fashion design, illustration, and theater design. In addition to her creative work, she shared her vision with students in Ukraine and later as a professor at the Académie Moderne and Fernand Léger’s Académie d’Art Contemporain in France. After emigrating to France in 1924, Exter continued to exhibit her work internationally, participating in the groundbreaking 1936 “Cubism and Abstract Art” exhibition in New York, as well as holding solo exhibitions in Prague and Paris.

About The Ukrainian Museum, New York
Founded in 1976, The Ukrainian Museum’s purpose is to acquire, preserve, exhibit, and interpret articles of artistic or historic value related to Ukrainian life and culture; to promote all aspects of Ukrainian culture; and to educate the public about Ukraine and Ukrainian culture. Seated in the heart of Manhattan’s vibrant East Village, the Museum has served as a prime resource for those seeking a connection to the cultural heritage of Ukraine for 47 years. As Russia continues its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, we aspire to not only represent Ukraine, but to also decolonize Ukrainian culture, continue speaking on the war, and raise awareness on the impact that Ukrainians from the diaspora have had in

the arts, and indeed the world. Throughout the last year, the Museum has curated major exhibitions, accompanied by fully researched, illustrated catalogues, that discuss Russia’s war against Ukraine, represent Ukraine’s folk art traditions, and display both largely known and largely unknown Ukrainian artists, such as Janet Sobel, Nikifor, Lesia Khomenko, Maria Prymachenko, Yelena Yemchuk, Peter Hujar, and more. We are also committed to educational programming that includes guided tours, courses, and workshops for adults and children. Community-oriented events such as lectures, symposia, concerts, and films have also been part of the Museum‘s programming, such as our newly-implemented Decolonization series, which will continue into next year.