Alexandre Alexandrovitch Alexeieff was a Russian Empire-born artist, filmmaker and illustrator who lived and worked mainly in Paris.
37 Facts About Alexandre Alexeieff
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Alexandre Alexeieff spent his early childhood in Istanbul where his father, Alexei Alexeieff, was a military attache.
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Alexandre Alexeieff's mother forced him to remain in his room and not touch his brothers.
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Alexandre Alexeieff was never heard from again; the family suspected that he died of typhus.
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Alexandre Alexeieff took a daily walk with his mother when he was forced to speak in French instead of Russian.
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Alexandre Alexeieff was shot by a Turk, probably because he knew too much about the Middle East.
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Alexandre Alexeieff's mother traveled to Germany without telling the children where she was going or why and only when she returned did Alexeieff learn that his father had died.
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Alexandre Alexeieff first went to stay with her brother-in-law near Odessa, then she went to Riga and finally settled in the town of Gatchina, Russia near Saint Petersburg.
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Alexandre Alexeieff was surprised to find that the image which was projected on the screen could be seen reflected in the lens of the projector, which happened to be close to where he was sitting.
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Alexandre Alexeieff later realized that the image on the lens was the original one.
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In Gatchina, Alexandre Alexeieff often walked alone along the wooden fences of the road nearby.
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However, his mother did return and Alexandre Alexeieff's family settled in Gatchin, a suburb of St Petersburg and later moved to nearby Lesnoi.
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Alexandre Alexeieff entered the Cadet School of Saint Petersburg at the age of seven.
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Alexandre Alexeieff would pass various objects, such as a violin, through the class, remove it and ask the students to draw it.
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However, Alexandre Alexeieff was able to petition for funds and obtain access to the library which was very valuable to him.
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Alexandre Alexeieff's older brother Vladimir was a student at the Cadet school.
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In 1921, Alexandre Alexeieff was forced to leave the city of Ufa where he had spent the summer with his maternal uncle in order to cross Siberia with a group of cadets.
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Alexandre Alexeieff started by working designing and painting sets for the Pioteff Theater.
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Alexandre Alexeieff lived in Montparnasse, a bohemian area of Paris.
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Alexandre Alexeieff's mother was given a ticket back to Poland, her native country.
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Alexandre Alexeieff became well known in this period shortly after illustrating his first rare books.
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Alexandre Alexeieff saw Alexieff's work in a bookshop window and got the name of the artist as well as his address from the owner of the bookstore.
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Alexandre Alexeieff was so impressed she arranged to meet him and came to Vaux-le Penail where the Alexeieffs lived.
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However, after the first large pin screen was built, Parker and Alexandre Alexeieff worked on it alone.
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In 1936, Alexandre Alexeieff was hired by a German film group in Berlin to lead an animation studio.
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Alexandre Alexeieff made a few animated films for German products and returned to Paris right before the Anschluss, the German annexation of Austria.
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Alexandre Alexeieff divorced Alexandra Grinevsky and married Claire Parker in 1940 after they arrived in the States.
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When Parker and Alexandre Alexeieff returned to Paris, they made a number of advertising films.
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Alexandre Alexeieff invented a technique called Totalization of Illusory Solids or simply Totalization.
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Parker died in 1981, in Paris and Alexandre Alexeieff followed Claire by a year.
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Alexandre Alexeieff is most famous for his invention of the pinscreen which he used to make about 6 short films.
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The pinboard on which Alexandre Alexeieff created his extraordinary black and white films is an upright perforated board, three by four feet, into which a million headless steel pins have been inserted.
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Later on Claire Parker and Alexandre Alexeieff built the first large pinscreen which was used to film Night on Bald Mountain.
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Alexandre Alexeieff never made sketches before he created the images on the screen.
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Alexandre Alexeieff conceived each of the stages on the positive side of the screen while Claire worked on the back side of it.
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Alexandre Alexeieff has written her memoirs which describe accurately her family's background.
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Alexandre Alexeieff's son, Alexandre Rockwell is an independent film maker in the United States.