This is the eGuide number for the object. You can find it next to selected objects in the exhibition.
This is the location number for the object.
Click here to go to the main menu.
Click here to change languages.
Click here to change the font size and log in.
Click here to show the location of the object.
Zoom with two fingers and rotate images 360° with one finger. Swipe an object to the side to see the next one.
Click here for background information, biographies, legends, etc.
Click here to listen to spoken texts or audio files.
Share an object.
Download as PDF.
Add to saved objects.
 
Marionette, Longhi I, 1926
Aleksandra Aleksandrovna Ekster
Marionette, Longhi I,
Aleksandra Aleksandrovna Ekster,
*1503

Marionette, Longhi I,
1926

Alexandra Exter
*1503
g1E0
[{"lat":47.38288606832224,"lng":8.535659874834096},{"floor":"floorplan-ug"}]
BF
GF
1
2
2
Museum für Gestaltung Zürich
Ausstellungsstrasse 60
8031 Zurich
Museum map
Museum für Gestaltung Zürich
Toni-Areal, Pfingstweidstrasse 94
8031 Zurich
Pavillon Le Corbusier
Höschgasse 8
8008 Zürich
Museum map
  • Longhi I Aleksandra Aleksandrovna Ekster Marionette
  • Longhi I Aleksandra Aleksandrovna Ekster Marionette
  • Longhi I Aleksandra Aleksandrovna Ekster Marionette
  • Longhi I Aleksandra Aleksandrovna Ekster Marionette
  • Longhi I Aleksandra Aleksandrovna Ekster Marionette
  • Longhi I Aleksandra Aleksandrovna Ekster Marionette
g1E0
6
7
Listen to the text
j

The Russian avant-garde artist Alexandra Exter (1882–1949) conceived the puppets she designed for a film as moving sculptures. She created aesthetic interest with contrasting surface textures and added moving metal parts to produce kinetic effects in the light.

The film by Danish filmmaker Peter Urban Gad, which was never made, was set alternately in seventeenth-century Venice and New York in the 1920s. Alexandra Exter, a successful painter in the Cubo-Futurist style and an experienced stage and costume designer, originally received an order for forty marionettes. After long years of commuting between cultures, she had finally settled in Paris for good in 1924, where she taught at Fernand Leger’s Académie Moderne. The eight marionettes in the collection of the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich embody characters in the commedia dell’arte tradition and are distinguished by grotesque helmets or deep black masks like those Exter had seen in the carnival scenes by the Venetian painter Pietro Longhi—which is where the figures got their name. The puppeteer Nechama Szmuszkowicz (1895–1977) translated Exter’s designs into three-dimensional figures using everyday materials. She made the joints as flexible as possible using balls and textile links, fulfilling Exter’s wish to generate an enhanced kinetic experience by combining the puppeteer’s calculated movements with the random motion of the freely hanging elements. Exter’s marionettes manifest a delight in experimenting with color, volume, and light, without any ambition to merely create an illusion of reality. (Sabine Flaschberger)

Marionette, Longhi I, 1926
Entwurf: Alexandra Exter
Ausführung: Nechema Szmuskowicz
Auftrag: Peter Urban Gad
Material/Technik: Holz; Textil; Zinn; verschiedene Kunststoffe
53 × 36 × 36 cm
Eigentum: Museum für Gestaltung Zürich / ZHdK
j
Literature

Sabine Flaschberger, «Spielfiguren der Avantgarde – Alexandra Exters Marionetten für einen Film», in: Museum für Gestaltung, Sabine Flaschberger (Hg.), Lasst die Puppen tanzen / Turn the Puppets Loose, Sammeln heisst forschen / Collecting as Research, Bd. 3, Zürich 2017.

Ada Raev, Alexandra Exter, in: Ingrid Pfeiffer/Max Hollein (Hg.): Sturm-Frauen. Künstlerinnen der Avantgarde in Berlin 1910–1932, Köln 2015.

Image credits

Marionette, Longhi I, 1926, Entwurf: Alexandra Exter, Ausführung: Nechema Szmuskowicz
Abbildung: Museum für Gestaltung Zürich / ZHdK

Marionette, Colombine, 1926, Entwurf: Alexandra Exter, Ausführung: Nechema Szmuskowicz
Abbildung: Museum für Gestaltung Zürich / ZHdK

Marionette, Arlequin bleu, 1926, Entwurf: Alexandra Exter, Ausführung: Nechema Szmuskowicz
Abbildung: Museum für Gestaltung Zürich / ZHdK

Marionette, Longhi III, 1926, Entwurf: Alexandra Exter, Ausführung: Nechema Szmuskowicz
Abbildung: Museum für Gestaltung Zürich / ZHdK

Marionette, Longhi II, 1926, Entwurf: Alexandra Exter, Ausführung: Nechema Szmuskowicz
Abbildung: Museum für Gestaltung Zürich / ZHdK

Marionette, Carabinier, 1926, Entwurf: Alexandra Exter, Ausführung: Nechema Szmuskowicz
Abbildung: Museum für Gestaltung Zürich / ZHdK

Marionette, Polichinelle, 1926, Entwurf: Alexandra Exter, Ausführung: Nechema Szmuskowicz
Abbildung: Museum für Gestaltung Zürich / ZHdK