Alexander Alekseev (1901–1982) is a kind of Leonardo da Vinci in the art of books and cinema, an artist and innovator, almost unknown to the Russian audience. Alekseev was born in Kazan, in the early 1920s he emigrated to France, where he became a student of the Russian theater artist S.Yu. Sudeikina. It was in Paris that he gained practical experience as a decorative artist, and with the support of the French surrealist poet F. Soupault, he began to carry out orders for book illustrations. Alekseev became a well-known book graphic artist abroad. His cycles of illustrations for publications of Russian and foreign classics are unique - “The Brothers Karamazov”, “Anna Karenina”, “Doctor Zhivago”, “Don Quixote”... “Notes of a Madman” by Gogol, “The Queen of Spades” by Pushkin, “Notes from the Underground” and “ Player" by Dostoevsky with the artist's graphic suites were published by publishing houses in Paris, London and New York. And his invention of a new way of shooting animated films - using a needle screen - made Alekseev the founder of a new animated film and the progenitor of computer graphics. The publishing layout of the book is saved in PDF A4 format.