David Shterenberg

The flourishing pluralism in the visual arts during the first decade of the twentieth century facilitated David Shterenberg’s distinct approach to rendering objects in space.  Static objects become animated through Shterenberg’s dynamic use of color and form, and the splintered brushwork of the Impressionists melds with the Cubist’s fragmentation of space as in the present work Fruit and Plate on a Red Background.

David Shterenberg methodically arranged each composition, carefully choosing each object.  Fruit and Plate on a Red Background uses a white plate and other items to create a mood, evoking memories using familiar Russian “every-day” porcelain.  Shterenberg’s innovative perspective liberates the objects from gravity and allows them to appear as entities in defiance of space. Each object is emphasized for its ritual quality.

It appears that Shterenberg painted this work in the 1920s, as it is consistent with his works from the period. White Vase on Red Background (see fig. 1), dated 1931 has a composition similar to Fruit and Plate and is executed in a similar style. Both paintings show everyday wares suspended in time and space against fiery red backgrounds. Shterenberg’s work of this period is also characterized by his use of increasingly tense, energized color combinations.

Fruit and Plate on a Red Background is an important example of  the work that Shreternberg created during this tumultuous time in his life.  At the time he painted this still life, Shreternberg was being stigmatized as the leader of the “formalists”, the propagandists of Western ideas.  Spreading such ideas was forbidden by the Soviet regime. The artist defended himself at a Moscow Organization of the Union of Soviet Artists meetings, where he was vice president: “… those who speak of traditional Russian painting forget that our Union included  multicultural peoples, the art of whom is as valuable as those of the European art. This art contains elements of such power of no lesser significance then that of European art. The art of these cultures is their understanding of color and form, has to be as extensively studied as the Renaissance…  there is no doubt in my mind, that whatever the conclusions may be of that group or another, the way of our revolutionary fine art does not lie in imitation and epigonism…We have to strive for the synthesis of form and content so that art, sculpture and architecture would contain in itself that which would set them apart from the preceding epochs (Declaration, 1932 read by the artist at the MOCCH meeting, Family Archives).