Steinberg, Eduard

Steinberg, Eduard

1937 - 2012

Eduard Steinberg was born in Moscow in 1937. He started to draw and paint at around twenty under the guidance of his father Arkady (1907-1984), a poet and an artist who studied in Vkhutemas or the Higher Art and Technical Studios in the late 1920s. Eduard copied established masters, worked from nature and showed his works at an exhibition in 1962 for the first time.
Steinberg painted semi-abstract metaphysical landscapes, figure sand still-lives style and started to take part in the exhibitions of unofficial artists. He joined the Moscow City Committee of Graphic Artists in 1967. After visiting the art collector George Costakis (1913-1990) where he saw works by Russian Suprematists and Constructivists he developed his version of geometric abstraction influenced by Kazimir Malevich (1979-1935).

In the 1970s Steinberg became a member of the Sretensky Boulevard Group which was part of the Moscow Conceptualist movement. Other members of the group included Iliy Kabakov ( born 1933) and Viktor Pivovarov ( born 1937). He showed his works at Nuove Correnti a Mosca show in Museo Belle Arti, Lugano, Switzerland in 1970 and exhibited at the Beekeeping Pavilion of the Exhibition of All-Union Economic Achievements in 1975. Eduard exhibited his paintings in many exhibitions of non-conformists artists in Russia and abroad.

Steinberg was invited to have his exhibition in France and was allowed to join the Union of Artists of the USSR before he moved to Paris and started to collaborate with Galerie Claude Bernard in 1988. He had his personal shows in the Josef-Albers-Museum in Bottrop in 1992 and the Museum für Konkrete Kunst, Ingolstadt, Germany in 2000, the State Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg in 2004, Museum Wiesbaden, Germany in 2015, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art in 2017 and was made an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Arts in 2008.

Works by Eduard Steinberg are present in Otten Kunstraum, Hohenems, Austria, Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest, Hungary, in the State Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg, the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow and numerous public and private collections around the world. His house-studio in the town of Tarusa, 80 miles to the south from Moscow, became part of the Pushkin Fine Art Museum in 2016.