David Shterenberg
Selma Stern
It is difficult
to find an artist of the 20th century who has been more neglected by art history
than the artist David Shterenberg. His works were banned in the 60s and 70s and
neither Russian nor foreign art critics were allowed access to Shterenberg`s
art works. When the Russian avant-garde was reviewed by art historians, Shterenberg
was again neglected as a result of his works being hidden in KGB controlled museum
depositories. This article shall contribute to the status and place that David
Shterenberg deserves in art history.
David Petrovich Shterenberg was born in 1881 in a small town called Zhitomir
in Russia. Instead of remaining as a photographer in Zhitomir or one of the small
provincial towns in Russia, Shterenberg went to Odessa in 1901, where he took
drawing lessons. He left Odessa for Paris five years later, where he started
earning his living by photography while studying art at the Academy Vitty. Shterenberg
moved into the famous La Ruche, where he lived with other artists like Chagall,
Modigliani and Soutine, and joined the studios of Fernand Leger, Albert Marque,
Amédée Ozenfant, Maurice Utrillo, Suzanne Valadon and Pierre Bonnard.
David Shterenberg
began his career with landscape paintings and portraits which he exhibited in
Parisian art salons. The first works of David Shterenberg are dated from 1908.
His talent was well recognized in Paris and Shterenberg ranked amongst the young
Paris talents. Since 1912 his works were exhibited at the Parisian Salon d`Indépendence.
Shterenberg soon turned to still life, which was a basic genre of the avant-garde
development. Cubism was evolving and the figurative element in still lives had
lost its meaning turning into a graphical analysis of single objects. Still life
began turning towards modern philosophical problems paving the way for the avant-garde
movement.
Having received
the news about the February revolution in Russia, Shterenberg returned to Moscow
where he met Anatoly Lunarchsky, whom he got to know in Paris and who, after
the October revolution, became the minister of the state education agency. Lunarchsky
appointed David Shterenberg as head of the fine arts department of the ministry.
Lunarchsky was far more acquainted with the modernist movement than Lenin, and
he was more tolerant of its aims, having known some of the émigré
Russian modern painters in Paris, also appointed Marc Chagall as Commissar of
Art in the artist`s home town Vitebsk.
Shterenberg`s position
at the state ministry had no influence on his life as artist and David Shterenberg
soon joined the Russian flaming art scene. His art denied 3 dimensional space,
representing single objects and decorative colour compositions. He brought with
him the ideas he had developed in Paris, and French motives appeared in his works.
His paintings ‘Herrings’, ‘Clabber’ and ‘Cakes’
– now in the Tretyakov Gallery – became legendary. The art critics
described them as reminiscences of the past famine in Russia.
Whereas Shterenberg enjoyed a happy family life and a successful career as artist
in the 20ies, this changed in the 30ies and his life turned into the beginning
of a future tragedy. He was stigmatized as so called ‘formalist’ artist
and leader of the formalist movement.
His name appeared
more often in the art chronicles of the 1920s and 30s than any other artist`s
name. Shterenberg`s name was both abused and praised; he was loved and admired
by disciples, and hated by conservative traditionalists; amongst the latter many
later became ‘proletarian’ and ‘socialist’ artists. Shterenberg`s
life ended in misery – he was abandoned by his country for almost half a
century.
David Shterenberg
died in 1948 and was buried at the Vagankovo cemetery in Moscow.
Catalogue ‘David Shterenberg. 78 tables’, Moscow Center of Art in cooperation
with the Moscow House of Photography, March-April 2000, published by ‘Logos/Gnosis’.
