119 - Marc STERLING (Prylouky 1895 – Paris 1976)

Marc STERLING (Prylouky 1895 – Paris 1976) Cubist Composition Circa 1922–1923 Oil on re-stretched canvas 54 x 65 cm Signed lower right "M.Sterling" On the back of the stretcher, titled, dated, and with provenance note: "Cubist Composition 1922-23 Eliane Sterling Collection, NEUCHATEL" (missing sections) Provenance: The artist’s studio Then passed down through the family Marc Sterling was born in Prilouki, a small town in Ukraine. He became involved in artistic creation at a very early age; around the age of fourteen, during an apprenticeship with an icon painter, he learned to mix colors. He then studied at the Moscow School of Fine Arts and at Vkhutemas. He left for Berlin in 1922 with the revolutionary painter Mayakovsky. Marc Sterling settled in Paris in 1923, encouraged to move to the French capital after seeing the richness of the works in the Shchukin Collection in Moscow (Henri Matisse and Picasso, among others). He immediately began associating with the avant-garde artists of the time, such as Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris, and Jean Metzinger. His first solo exhibition was organized by Christian Zervos at the Galerie Georges Bernheim in 1928. There, he primarily presented still lifes in which he reinterpreted Cubism through his own lens. The colors were strong and matte; the forms were lively and sinuous; and he combined smooth brushwork with abundant impasto. Marc Sterling participated in numerous group exhibitions, exhibited at the Salon d’Automne and the Salon des Tuileries, and was the subject of many solo exhibitions in Paris as well as internationally. This Cubist still life dates from the very beginning of the painter’s arrival in Paris in 1923. In it, the artist deploys a Cubist language all his own, appropriating the principles of Analytical Cubism to develop a deeply personal vision of form and space. The geometrization of forms is accompanied by a deliberately limited color palette, allowing the artist to focus his attention on the interplay of volumes, lines, and planes. Everyday objects—the alarm clock, the pitcher, the books, the bottle, and even the vial—are subjected to a geometric construction that gives rhythm to the composition. Decomposed and recomposed, they become guiding lines and masses that structure the pictorial space. This formal rigor is balanced by a remarkable diversity of materials and techniques, lending the work as a whole a sensory dimension. On the geometric surfaces, Marc Sterling varies textural effects and techniques: here, he punctuates a smooth surface with small, round brushstrokes; there, he reveals floral motifs by scraping away paint with the back of the brush; elsewhere, he multiplies vertical lines or enlivens the backgrounds with textures that disrupt the regularity of the planes. Thus, a vibrant work emerges, in which material, light, and gesture engage in a dialogue with geometry. As such, this still life constitutes a particularly rare example of Marc Sterling’s early work. E.V