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Aniska
David Petrovich Shterenberg
1926
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The Russian painter David Petrovich Shterenberg was born in Zhitomir, Ukraine, and studied art in Odessa and then in Paris, where he lived from 1906 to 1912 and was a member of the East European Jewish artistic colony. He did not return to Russia permanently until 1917. In the 1930s, his avant-garde individualism, shaped during his Paris years, fell out of favor with the regime and he was forced to work in a more realistic style. This did not spare him, however, from being marginalized by the Soviet art world.
God has pity on kindergarten children,
He pities school children—less.
But adults he pities not at all.
He abandons them,
And sometimes they have to crawl on all fours
In the scorching sand
To reach…
And suddenly he lifted his eyes to see,
A stranger approaching the hill with the tree.
He jumped off the branch and hurried below,
Joining the old man who walked on the road.