IRINA STENBERG (1905-1985) Jumpers [Dukhobors. Khlysty]

Inscribed and signed in Cyrillic ‘Pryguny I Shtemberg’ (lower right) watercolour on paper 25.8 x 23.6 cm Irina Stenberg (1903–1984) was a Soviet-Jewish artist and theatre designer. Born in Tbilisi and of German origin, her father, Valerian Stenberg, was a civil engineer whose work required frequent relocations; the family eventually left St Petersburg and moved to Georgia. Stenberg received her initial artistic training at the Painting and Sculpture School of the Caucasian Society for the Promotion of Fine Arts and continued her studies at the Tbilisi Academy of Art from 1923 to 1927. Her early years at the Academy shaped her attraction to the erotic–decadent aesthetics of the Art Nouveau style. In 1929, Stenberg moved to Moscow, where her first solo exhibition was held the same year. She returned to Georgia a few years later, at a moment when increasing ideological pressure was being imposed on Soviet art at the end of the 1920s. From 1936 onwards, she found in theatre design a refuge for her artistic practice. Apart from a small series of portraits, she did not return to easel painting, and as a result, she came to be recognised primarily as a theatre designer.