Society and Book Culture: Retrospective of book graphics of Alexander Alekseev presented in St. Petersburg

September 24, 2016 in the "Cabinet of the book of the artist" (The State Hermitage, Saint Petersburg) opens a new exhibition "Alexander Alekseev - the master of the book. Collection of Mark Bashmakov".

The Hermitage for the first time held a retrospective book graphics of Alexander Alekseev - outstanding illustrator and cartoonist, a pioneer of the art of animation. The exhibition presents all book wizard - from the earliest to the released posthumously. All of them, except for a few sheets belong to M. I.  Bashmakov, one of the first connoisseurs and promoters of the artist in our country.

Alexander Alekseev became known worldwide as an innovator in the field of animated film, created by the famous needle screen. But the beginning of his career is associated with the book. At the turn of the 1920s and 1930s, Alekseev, shortly after the revolution moved from Russia to France, illustrated by several dozen publications that caused enthusiastic responses of contemporaries. His masterly etchings and lithographs were added to graphic cinematography techniques of avant-garde photography and photomontage. It is on the charts that Alekseev came to animation and returned to it throughout life, already using its experience as a multiplier.

The most important works of the master - the large cycles of illustrations to "The Brothers Karamazov", "Anna Karenina" and "Doctor Zhivago", engraving in "Diary of a Madman", "Queen of Spades", the stories of Edgar Allan Poe - will be shown at the exhibition.