Hans Björkegren (1933-2017) was a Swedish journalist and accomplished translator specializing in works by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Björkegren lived and worked in Moscow 1960-68. He became a collector of non-conformist art as he forged bonds and friendships in the cultural and liberal circles of Moscow life.
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Edward Steinberg was born in 1937 in Moscow. His father, the artist, poet and translator Arkady Steinberg was arrested for the first time the same year. Years later when his father was released, the family moved to Tarussa, a center for dissidents and the intelligentia. Steinberg started his self-trained artistic education by copying still lives, portraits and landscapes of Tarusa. Moving to Moscow in 1962, he actively participated in the nonconformist movement. He became increasingly interested in symbolic themes. Organic attributes such as stones, shells, dead fish and sculls were introduced in his art in the mid 60s. The painting "Composition with a bird" is very typical of this period. The canvas is divided into different zones representing the sky and earth. Objects of geometrical shape can be made out at the lower edge of the canvas. Steinberg was at the time, on the verge of entering his meta-geometric period during which he, inspired by KAzimir MAlevich, used only the geometric elements of a triangel, a rectangle, a circle, and a cross in hundreds of canvases, collages and gouaches on cardboard. From 1991, Steinberg lived and worked in Paris, Moscow and Tarussa. His work has been exhibited widely and is present in many museums around the world, including a permanent room in the collection of the St Petersburg Hermitage Museum.