«Of kings and stags on the world’s stages!»

The effect unfolded by a marionette is best gauged not by its size but by the concentrated essence of its artistic expressiveness and design. In the early twentieth century, a number of artists devoted their talents to designing figures and stage sets for puppet shows. Alfred Altherr founded the Swiss Marionette Theatre in 1918, which operated at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich until 1935. Two Zurich productions are prime examples of the development of marionettes in the era of modernism: Sophie Taeuber-Arp’s figures for the play “The Stag King” and Otto Morach’s marionettes for Claude Débussy’s “Boîte à joujoux.” Both artists took a step away from the customary historicist or fairytale styling to create more abstract designs combining puppet, surface qualities, and costume in an utterly novel way. In 1926, the Russian painter Alexandra Exter also tried her hand at designing marionettes, for a film project based on the creative principles of Cubism and Futurism. Instead of hanging tamely from strings, the marionettes were lent greater expressive possibilities and a new way of moving, helping puppetry gain a higher profile as a genre of stage art.