ALEXANDRE ALEXEIEFF

Alexandre Alexandrovitch Alexeieff was a Russian Empire-born artist, filmmaker and illustrator who lived and worked mainly in Paris. He and his second wife Claire Parker (1906–1981) are credited with inventing the pinscreen as well as the animation technique totalization. In all Alexeieff produced 6 films on the pinscreen, 41 advertising films and illustrated 41 books. 

Born in Ufa, Russia in 1901, Alexandre Alexeïeff spent his childhood between Turkey and Russia. He moved to Paris in 1920 and worked as a stage designer and costume designer for directors such as Louis Jouvet, Georges Pitoëff and for the Ballets Russes and the Swedish Ballets. Passionate about drawing and engraving, he also illustrates many books by Giraudoux, Gogol, Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Poe, Malraux, Baudelaire ...


In 1931, Alexeïeff, with the help of his companion Claire Parker, wanted to give life to his engravings and developed a new animation technique known as the pin screen. Thousands of pins are fixed on a vertical panel lit by grazing light and can be driven in or out at will. The shadows of the pins make it possible to form an infinite variety of images that will then be filmed one by one.

In 1933, Alexandre Alexeïeff and Claire Parker made their first film together based on this technique, A Night on the Bald Mount, a fantastic illustration of the music of Modeste Moussorgsky. They will realize four others using this same technique: By the way (1944), The nose (1963), Pictures of an exhibition (1972) and Three themes (1980).

Alexandre Alexeïeff has also directed numerous commercials in animated volumes and tabulations, a technique invented by him which consists in generating with the help of pendulums, light patterns in long exposure. Alexandre Alexeïeff died in 1982.