Order the catalogue			Of solid social status (as were most of the Amazons), Exter traveled constantly between the Ukraine, Russia, France, and Italy, and served as an important emissary between the Russian avant-garde and the latest movements in Western Europe. Indeed, the very titles of her paintings, such as Venice, 1915, emphasize her main points of geographical and cultural commitment. While maintaining a sincere interest in indigenous folk art, especially Ukrainian embroidery, Exter investigated the concepts of Cubism, Futurism, and Simultanism before reaching abstraction, a momentum that resulted in her magnificent non-objective paintings of 1917-18.
			Exter was an artist of many disciplines, for, while studio painting remained her favorite medium, she also used the book, cinema, ceramics, and especially the theater as vehicles for her experiments–to a considerable degree Exter can be regarded as Russia's most radical stage designer of the 1910s. Along with Popova and Stepanova, she contributed to the landmark 5 x 5 = 25 exhibition held in Moscow in 1921, a conclusive event at which the artists proposed that studio painting had run its course and that industrial design should take over its creative role. On this level Exter's abstract paintings may be regarded as laboratory exercises in form, color, texture, and rhythm that contain potential resolutions for applications to stage, textile, and book design.
			Above: Scene from William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, produced at the Chamber Theater, Moscow, with set and costume designs by Exter, 1917.	Top right: City, 1913. Oil on canvas, 88.5 x 70.5 cm. Regional Picture Gallery, Vologda.