This Art Deco print from "Ballroom for Bouddha Vivant" is one of two examples of images Alexandre Alexeieff created for Paul Morand's book Bouddha Vivant that chronicled modern life in the 20th century, published in Paris, 1928. The unique style and subtleties of this image is an excellent example of why Alexeieff's work captures the attention and emotions. As a depiction of the times, the image is striking in its choice of subject matter.

Alexandre Alexeieff (1901 – 1982), a Russian-born artist, filmmaker and illustrator, lived and worked mainly in Paris. Alexeieff is famous for his invention of the Pin Screen technique, an early form of stop motion animation, and Totalization, an image capture technique that involved filming a moving object at long exposures to visualize the trace of its path of motion. During his career he produced short films, advertising films, and illustrated books.

His early life in war-time Russia was fraught with personal turmoil punctuated by the death of his father and two brothers. Still his early artistic talents were recognized and he excelled in art training while in Cadet school. He arrived in Montparnasse Paris in 1921 when he evaded conscripted service in a cargo operation, by jumping ship in the French Riviera. He married and became artistic partners with actress Alexandra Grinevskya, the illegitimate daughter of a St. Petersburg dignitary exiled in Paris. Together they built the first pin screen.

In 1931 Claire Parker, a well-to-do American art student came to France to study, saw Alexeieff's work in a bookshop window, arranged to meet him, and became his lover and eventual second wife. Alexeieff, Parker and Grinevskaya worked together for the following decade, making about 25 stop motion-animated commercials. In 1940 they left briefly for America when war broke out. During that time they made an animated film sponsored by the National Film Board of Canada.

Alexeieff and Grinevskya divorced and Parker and Alexeieff came back to Paris. They made a number of advertising films and continued their own projects using the pin screen and the totalization techniques. In 1962, they created the prologue to Orson Welles' film adaptation of Franz Kafka's novel The Trial using Pin Screen.