Swann Galleries - Illustration Art - Sale 2403

217

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ALEXANDRA EXTER.

Costume design for Romeo and Juliet. Watercolor and pencil on board with silk fabric

swatches. 388x275 mm; 15

x10

inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower right. A band

along the top contains 7 mounted color silk swatches (1x2

inches) captioned 1-7. The

margins contain Exter’s lettering in blue and penciled numbers corresponding to the

swatches, indicating the fabric colors to be used in each section of the costume.

[6,000/9,000]

ORIGINAL COSTUME DESIGN BY THE MOST IMPORTANT WOMAN OF THE RUSSIAN AVANT

GARDE

In 1916, Exter joined Aleksandr Tairov’s Kamerny Theater in Moscow as a costume and set

designer. Her most famous work was for Romeo and Juliet in 1921, for which she employed Cubist

and Futurist-inspired geometric shapes and vibrant colors to create costumes that contributed to a unified

sculptural environment for the stage design. This is the only design we know of containing fabric

swatches. The date of this piece, which was 16 years after the production, may indicate that Exter

included the work in her final art exhibition held at the Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris in 1937.