Aleksandra Ekster
Painter
Russian-French painter, graphic artist, and theatrical designer associated with the Futurism, Cubism, and Constructivism movements. She was also a member of the avant-garde group of artists known as Supremus.
She studied painting at Kiev Art School in the early 1900s. Her painting studio became a gathering hub for the intellectual elite of Kiev; she hosted such notables as Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam, and Wladimir Baranoff-Rossine.
She contributed to the Salon des Independants exhibitions in Paris in 1914.
She was born into an upper-class Belarusian family. She married lawyer Nicolas Evgenievich Ekster in 1908.
She was a friend of famed artist Pablo Picasso, who also introduced her to Gertrude Stein.