Shterenberg, David Petrovich

Born July 14 (26), 1881, in Zhitomir; died May 1, 1948, in Moscow. Soviet painter and graphic artist.

From 1907 to 1917, Shterenberg lived in Vienna and in Paris, where he attended the Academy of Arts and the Vitti Academy. He was head of the art department of the People’s Commissariat of Education from 1918 to 1920. Shterenberg was one of the organizers and the chairman of the Society of Easel Painters from 1925 to 1930. He taught in the State Free Art Workshops, the Vkhutemas, and the Vkhutein in Moscow between 1920 and 1930.

As an active supporter of Western modernist trends, Shterenberg took a one-sided approach to the tasks of reinterpreting the artistic heritage for the new revolutionary society. His works are distinguished for their strikingly expressive imagery and laconic composition, as well as for the precision of their abstracted forms and flatness of composition. Notable examples include Anis’ka, (1926), The Agitator (1927), and The Old (1927), all at the Tret’iakov Gallery in Moscow, and Still Life With Lamp (1920), at the Russian Museum in Leningrad.