Dear Members of the List,
We are pleased to announce that VOLUME, the new
Chelsea gallery devoted to the intersection of art and the book, is hosting
an exhibition of the books and prints of the great Russian illustrator,
printmaker and avant-garde filmmaker Alexandre Alexeieff. An opening
reception will be held
Thursday, May 1st, 6-8pm. Refreshments will be served. Gallery hours are
Tuesday through Saturday, 11-6, or by appointment.
For further information and some images, please see
www.avantgardes.com/alexeieff/
We look forward to greeting you at the exhibition, and we hope you will add
Volume to your map of New York book sites. The full press release and a
short biography of the artist appear below.
Sincerely,
John Wronoski
re: Alexandre Alexeieff: Illustrator of the Fantastic.
Exhibition to be held at Volume, May 1st through June 7th, 2003.
VOLUME
530 West 24th Street
New York, NY 10011
Phone: 212-989-8700
Fax: 212-989-8708
Email: volumegallery@yahoo.com
Volume is pleased to announce the first US exhibition of the prints
and illustrated books of master printmaker and experimental filmmaker
Alexandre Alexeieff (1901-1982). On view will be approximately forty
books illustrated between 1926 and 1991, using a variety of printmaking
techniques, including woodcut, linocut, lithography, etching, aquatint,
as well as works illustrated using his innovative pin screen technique,
a method first developed for his work in experimental animation. Nearly
50 prints, including rare proof and test prints will be exhibited as
well. The collection represents the personal archive of the artist.
Duplicate individual items will be offered for sale. The extensive
personal archive of Alexeieff is available for purchase en bloc. We will
be happy to provide an invenory for interested parties.
Alexeieff, a Russian who fled in the aftermath of the revolution and moved
to Paris, illustrated works by authors including Poe, Baudelaire,
Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Pushkin and Flaubert, as well as the works of his
friends Andre Malraux and Philippe Soupault. Rare prints from the
archive of his estate, including test and proof prints never before
exhibited, and prints from several unpublished works, including Gogol’s
Le Nez (his first book illustrations, 1926), and Cervantes’ Don Quixote,
will be exhibited.
An opening reception will be held Thursday, May 1st, 6-8pm. Refreshments
will be served. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11-6, or by
appointment.
The exhibition was curated and installed by Don Lindgren and Jan Van der
Donk of Jan Van der Donk – Rare Books, Inc.
Volume is a new space dedicated to the exhibition of works that occupy
the intersection of text and image. Proprietors: Nick Lawrence , owner
of LFLGallery (NYC) and DNA Gallery (Provincetown) and John W. Wronoski
owner of Lame Duck Books (Boston) and co-owner of Locus Solus Rare Books
Inc. and Jan Van der Donk - Rare Books, Inc. (both NYC).
For further information, please contact Lorenzo Scala at the
gallery.
Alexandre Alexeieff (1901-1982)
Alexandre Alexeieff was born in Ufi (Russia), and spent his early
childhood in Constantinople, the son of a military attaché in the
Russian embassy there. At the time of the Revolution he was in Cadet
school in St. Petersburg. In 1921 he left Russia for France. In the
early years in France his artistic output was prodigious and varied.
Alexeieff designed costumes for the Ballet Suedois and the Ballet Russe,
he created book illustrations in woodcut, linocut, lithography, etching
and aquatint, and he began his lifelong involvement with experimental
animation.
Alexeieff was increasingly engaged by the films of the time, including
Caligari, the early films of Chaplin, The Blue Angel, three of Man Ray’s
films and in particular Bartosch’s l’Idee, adapted from a book by
Masereel, and subtitled, ‘animated engraving’. It was this concept that
enabled him to make the leap from his print experiments in xylography to
animation, and which led to his invention of l’ecran epingles, or the
pin screen. His work on the pin screen, a large mechanical device that
enabled him to rapidly change images, culminated in the experimental
animation masterpiece, Night on Bald Mountain (completed six years prior
to the release of the same name by Disney). The pin board “is an upright
perforated board in which a million headless pins have been inserted.
When the pins are pushed forward and are lit obliquely, they create an
entirely black surface. When they are pushed back, the white of the
board shows through… in between, they create greys.” (Cecile Starr).
But in the same space of time that Alexeieff was inventing a new form of
expression through film, he was becoming a master etcher and aquatint
artist. Combining sensibilities at once surrealist and classical,
ancient and modern, with characters from ancient Siberian Shamans to
Paris’ Montmartre , Alexeieff chose to illustrate books representing his
personal journeys, including works of Poe, Baudelaire, Apollinaire,
Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Pushkin, Hans Christian Andersen, Tolstoy,
Pasternak, as well as those of his friends, Andre Malraux and Philippe
Soupault. The illustrations spanned the whole spectrum of printmaking
techniques and demonstrated an inexorable desire for technical
innovation. His inventions include the electrolytic deposit etching, (a
technique used to create a sense of depth, by depositing copper on
copper). The technique was used to magisterial effect in the
illustrations for the medieval Russian epic Prince Igor; and the
application of pin screen imagery to book illustration, most effectively
used to illustrate Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago.
Alexeieff’s output was more than impressive: he illustrated forty-one
books, including the massive projects Les Freres Karamazov and Anna
Karenina, each with over one hundred prints, and he created eight
animated films and dozens of short films for advertising clients.
Together with Clare Parker, he built twelve pin screens over the 49
years spanning 1931 to 1980. His publishers and printers could hardly
keep up with his output, and he left behind several complete but
unpublished works at the time of his death in 1982, including Cervantes’
Don Quixote and Gogol’s Le Nez (his first book illustrations, executed
in 1926).