Evgeny Lvovich Rotenberg (1899-1968) - Leningrad draftsman and painter. The name of Evgeny Rotenberg is little known to a wide circle of art lovers, but for connoisseurs and connoisseurs of the Leningrad art of the post-war period, it occupies a very honorable niche. The sonorous term ANDEGROUND does not fit the work of Evgeny Rotenberg, but he is a typical representative of «quiet», underground art, when the artist voluntarily chooses the path of «quiet rebellion against a great power» and does not make any compromises.
First he studied abroad, then at the Academy of Arts under V.E. Savinsky and A.E. Karev. His work was influenced by a meeting with Pavel Filonov, from whom he took lessons in the early 1930s and professed his ideological principles. Evgeny ROTENBERG, like Alik Rivin, is one of the few whales of the Stalin era. According to Shemyakin, Nekrasov, Rakovsky, Katsenelson and others, he was the most significant artist of those years. In terms of pictures, it is not surpassed even now. At the same time, about a hundred of his works, destroyed by his sister, survived by Katzenelson, with a dozen - by Shemyakin, 4 pieces - by the Rakovsky. An artist who is not in any museum. One of the few who loved and highly appreciated the work of Evgeny Rotenberg was the famous Leningrad collector Lev Borisovich Katsenelson, who in those years supported an unnecessary artist. Moreover, he was his inspired popularizer and everyone who came to his house was happy to show folders with Rotenberg's works.
L.B. Katsenelson is a student of Pavel Filonov. After the war, he was expelled from the Academy of Arts for willfulness. One of the biggest art collectors.
