Margareta Sterian

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Margareta Sterian was a Jewish-Romanian avant-garde painter, writer, and translator. She studied painting in Paris at the Ranson Academy with Cubism-influenced artist Roger Bissière and with the painter Amédée de la Patellière, auditing art history classes at the École du Louvre. Highly active in the local avant-garde circles in Romania, she was closely connected with the likes of Victor Brauner, Cornelia Babic, and M. H. Maxy. Between 1930 and 1937, she created decorative frescos for multiple buildings in Bucharest in collaboration with Marcel Iancu.  Sterian’s paintings construct refuge spaces from harsh sociopolitical realities in dreamy yet peculiar atmospheres augmented by the diffuse contours, powerful plays of warm and cool colours, undefined faces, and elongated, often swaying bodies. Uncanny and flamboyant characters such as circus performers portrayed alongside animals often populate the artist’s universe, as seen in Circus Scene.  Throughout her career, Sterian was part of numerous exhibitions in cities such as Bucharest, Warsaw, Dresden, and Rome.