IRINA STENBERG (1905-1985) Сollecting scrap metal

signed in Cyrillic and dated ‘I Shtenberg 33’ (lower right), inscribed in Cyrillic ‘Sbor Loma’ (along lower edge), daled ‘1933’ (lower left) watercolour on paper 24.7 x 31 cm executed in 1933 Irina Stenberg (1903–1984) was a talented theatre designer. Member of the Union of Artists of the USSR. People's Artist of the Georgian SSR. Her father, Valerian Stenberg, German by origin, was a civil engineer whose work required frequent relocations; the family eventually left St Petersburg and moved to Georgia. After the Revolution of 1917, the Stenbergs finally settled in Tbilisi. Irina Stenberg was born and educated in Tbilisi, Georgia. She 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 time 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 came to be recognised primarily as a theatre designer.