Eduard Steinberg

A creator of geometrical abstract paintings, Eduard Steinberg was born in 1937 into the family of poet, translator, and artist A.A. Steinberg. Shortly after his birth, his father was arrested by the Stalin regime and thrown into prison. Upon his release, the family settled in Tarusa and Eduard helped his parents in their pursuits, though he had no professional artistic education. He lived in Tarusa from 1957 to 1961, teaching himself to paint by making copies of still lives, portraits and landscape paintings of Tarusa. Moving to Moscow in 1962, he actively participated in the nonconformist movement - which supported freedom of expression in arts and basic human rights. In the 1970s Steinberg began creating his own version of geometrical abstraction where a plastic construction is seen as a consequence of a spiritual impulse. In 1992, the Tretyakov gallery organized a major exhibition of Steinberg’s works, the first one dedicated entirely to the artist. Since then, his work has been exhibited widely and is present in many museums around the world. Steinberg died in 2012 in Paris.

Eduard Steinberg is one of the major Nonconformist artists, the most striking representatives of the second wave of the Russian avant-garde. Initially he worked en plein air, painted landscapes, still-lifes and portraits of friends. Then he moved to “metaphysical still-lifes”, reaching - under the influence of Malevich - his well known abstract style. By retaining the overall impression that his flying forms are hovering in space, Steinberg reduced to a minimum the sharp contrasts in color, inherent in the original suprematism, giving his forms a likeness to a melancholic memory of the avant-garde. His abstract pieces are characterized by calm and eternity, rather heavy planes of color and well-pressed lines. These paintings developed into a series spanning many years, elegant in its modeling of form and full of subtle decorative intuition.

Eduard Steinberg has exhibited his work in some of the most prestigious international spaces for modern and contemporary art. Russian museums that have included his work in solo and collective exhibitions include the Tretyakov State Gallery of Moscow; the Marble Palace and the State Russian Museum of St. Petersburg; the National Center For Contemporary Art (NCCA); and the Moscow Museum of Modern Art – MMOMA. His work has also been extensively exhibited in Germany at the Josef Albers Museum; the Museum Wiesbaden; the Museum für Konkrete Kunst of Ingolstadt; the Leverkusen Modern Art Museum Morsbroich; the Wilhelm-Hack Museum; the Museum für Konkrete Kunst; the Kunstmuseum Bochum; the Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst; the Leopold-Hoesch-Museum & Papiermuseum Düren; the Museum Kunstpalast and the Neue Nationalgalerie of Berlin. Additionally, he has exhibited at the Kunstmuseum Bern (Switzerland); the Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum (Slovakia); the Tyrolean State Museum (Austria); and at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of New York (USA).