Profession: theatre designer

Exter’s dynamic abstract painting and pioneering approach to stage design make her a significant figure at a key stage of modernism. Her Kyiv studio was an artistic and intellectual hub, with Lissitzky, Ehrenburg, Szymanowski, Akhmatova, Mandelstam and Nijinska among visitors. Rodchenko, Stepanova, Rozanova and Puni were significant colleagues in Moscow, where she was particularly close to Malevich, and interceded between him and Tatlin. In Paris she knew Picasso, Braque, the Delaunays, and a host of others, and was a great friend of Léger. Still under-appreciated, she was also a lynch-pin between the Parisian cubists, the Italian Futurists, and the Russians.