Alexander Alexeev: life and work of the artist

Alexander Alexeev (1901-1982) - book illustrator, graphic artist, author of animated films. As a Russian by birth, he spent almost all his life outside the country, but his soul always remained true to his roots and homeland.

No doubt, Alexander's talent can overcome any boundaries of time and space. His innovative approach to graphics and animation delighted his contemporaries - Salvador Dali and Orson Welles. However, in the 21st century, the originality of his thinking and mastery continue to serve as an example for gifted young people.

Childhood and the youthful years of wandering

The first years of his life, Alexander Alexeyev spent in sunny Constantinople, where his father at that time served as military attache. The family of little Sasha moved to St. Petersburg after the sudden disappearance of his father during a business trip to Germany. While studying in the cadet corps (1912-1917), the boy was carried away by drawing.

When the revolution began, Alexander moved to Ufa to relatives, and two years later fled to Vladivostok. In 1920, the future artist hired a sailor to the ship, leaving the port, and left his native country. Alexeyev's way to France, where he settled in 1921, was thorny and tortuous - through China, India, Japan, Egypt and England.

French life

In Paris Alexander Alexeev (photo above) continued to study painting in the studio S. Sudeikina. In 1922 he began to work as a decorator in local theaters, which contributed to the development of his passion for graphics and engraving. In 1923 Alekseev married the theatrical actress Alexander Grinevskaya and became a father.

Beginning in 1925 Alexander tries himself as an illustrator of books and achieves some success. His creations are decorated with French translations of the books of AS Pushkin, FM Dostoevsky, NV Gogol and other great writers.

Innovative Experiments

Alexander Alekseev was very impressed by the experimental German films ("The Idea" by B. Bartash and "The Mechanical Ballet" by F. Leger) and decided to find his way in the cinematographic art. Together with his assistant Claire Parker, he invented a unique way of animation with the help of a "needle screen". The surface of the screen, made of soft material, was threaded with thousands of needles that protruded under pressure and repeated the contour of the object. Thanks to special lighting, graphic images resembling dashed engravings were created.

In 1933, with the help of his invention, Alexander managed to remove the rave reviews of the painting "A Night on a Bald Mountain" under the musical accompaniment of M. P. Mussorgsky. At the same time, Alekseev created his own studio for animated films.

The lack of stable earnings pushed Alexander to create commercials for commercial companies, which he did with his team for four years (from 1935 to 1939).

In 1940 he, together with A. Grinevskaya, emigrated to the USA. A year later he received a divorce and married assistant Claire Parker. Alexander Alexeyev continued to work in advertising, but he did not throw his own experiments. In 1943, with the help of a "needle screen", he created the film "Mimo".

Glory and recognition

Alexander returned to Paris in 1946 and continued to create commercials and book illustrations. Creative genius, together with his wife, was able to invent one more unusual animation technique, called "totalization of illusory solids". Its essence lies in the time-lapse photography of a light source moving in a given direction using a pendulum system. At the same time, complicated effects appeared, similar to computer graphics, even before its appearance.

With the use of this technique, an advertising video "Smoke" was created, marked with a prize at the Venice Biennale in 1952.

Alexander's authority in the cinematic world reached such heights that he could afford to film several more films on the "needle screen", which later gained fame in many countries: "The Nose" (based on the novella of N. Gogol), "Three Themes", " Pictures from an exhibition ».

Alexander Alexeev did not leave his work until his old age. The biography of this talented man inspired several directors to create films about him. So, in 2010 Nikita Mikhalkov released a documentary film dedicated to the life and work of an animated innovator.

Alexander is rightly considered a major and influential cultural figure in France. In Russia, unfortunately, much less is known about him, but recently he was recognized about him, thanks to the exhibitions of his works.

Alexander Alekseev is an artist and animator who knew how to transfer the play of light and shadow, which did not cease to surprise with his original vision of everything and the constant creative search for new forms of expressiveness.