DAVID SHTERENBERG (1881-1948)

DAVID SHTERENBERG (1881-1948)
Portrait of the artist’s sister
(Malka Shterenberg)
Oil on cardboard
74,5 x 47,5 cm
Circa 1920
Provenance:
Given by the artist to V. Baranov-Rossine
Family of V. Baranov-Rossine
Private collection, Europe

Exhibited:
Paris, Musée de Montmartre, Russes, 20 June-21
September 2003
Contemporaries of the Future. Jewish Artists
in the Russian Avant-garde. 1910-1980, Jewish
Museum and Centre of Tolerance. Moscow, 24th
of March – 24th of May, 2015.

Literature:
Exhibition catalogue, Russes, Paris: Musée de
Montmartre, 2003, illustrated p.115
Exhibition catalogue, Contemporaries of the Future.
Jewish Artists in the Russian Avant-garde.
1910-1980, 2015, Moscow: Jewish Museum and
Centre of Tolerance, illustrated p. 62

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Defined by A. V. Lunacharsky «a decisive modernist» and «an honest man», David Shterenberg was a Soviet artist born in a modest Jewish family in Zhytomyr. He took active part in the defense of Zhytomyr during the three-day pogroms, after which he was forced to leave the Russian Empire. He lived briefly in Vienna, and then moved to Paris, where he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts and at the Académie Vitti with the famous Kees van Dongen, one of the leading figures of Fauvism. During this period, he made several trips to Russia but did not settle there until after the 1917 Revolution.
Deeply aware of his origins, he never missed the opportunity to support the Jewish artistic
community, for example by presenting an exhibition with the group «Jewish Society for the
Promotion of Arts» in Moscow or organizing an exhibition of Jewish artists in Moscow in 1922 which included Marc Chagall. In the same year, he participated in the First Berlin Exhibition of Russian Art in the van Diemen Gallery, the first major exhibition on the Russian avant-garde in Europe since the October Revolution. From 1920 to 1930, he was teacher in an art school founded in 1920 by a decree of Lenin. Among his students are some famous Russian artists such as Yuri Pimenov, Piotr Vladimirovich Williams, Andrei Dmitrievich Goncharov and others. A master of theatrical scenery, Shterenberg worked in the State Jewish and Moscow Drama and other theaters.
He was a bright, creative personality, one of the recognized leaders who determined the cultural policy of the young Soviet state.
This painting portraits his younger sister Malka and is part of a series of family paintings, of
which most known is Portrait of the Artist’s Father and Sister (1914). It was presented among works of other Russian avant-garde artists at a Jewish artists exhibition in 2015.