68
●
ALEXANDRA EXTER.
Two-sided book illustration.
Mixed media on paper. 295x230 mm;
11
3
/
4
x9 inches, sheet. Hand-painted text
from a sonnet by Petrarch translated into
French as Il Compte L’effet Du Temps.
Unsigned but with Exter estate and Simon
Lissim rubberstamps including his signa-
ture lower right border. Painting on verso
with archival tape at upper margins just
touching image. Shortly before she died in
1949, Exter bequethed her studio and doc-
umentation to Lissim, an artist well-known
in his own right who immigrated to Paris
from Kiev and then to America. Circa
1939; with later date of April, 1978, from
Lissim’s Dobbs Ferry, New York, gallery.
[2,500/3,500]
Fine example of Exter’s later manuscript illus-
tration work. “Her particular interest in Greek
poetry is evidenced by the impressive quality of
her pictorial output on such publications. Echoes
of her abstract experience took her in these figurative illustrations to new visual heights. Bursts of colour
and centrifugal arrangements, very often thrown into oblique paths of great complexity, attest to the vivac-
ity of her creativity” (A.Nakov, Encyclopédia de l’art moderne, 2012).
