Sterenshuss was one of the important sculptors in the art of the fifties in Israel. He was awarded the Dizengoff Prize in 1954 and 1956, and erected a number of outdoor sculptures, such as Lot's Wife in Mitzpeh-Ramon (1962) and Moses in the Arison Garden in Tel Aviv (1983), which are interesting reference points in the Israeli sculptural landscape.

 

From Prof. Mordechai Omer, Director and Chief Curator of Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Forward to the book Moshe Sterenshuss: Volumes and Lines, 2001.

 

His significant sculptural work begins in Paris, in the days when he graduated the Beuax-Arts, with his Academic realism, he tried to penetrate, in a moderate psycological way, into the souls of his sculptured figures. A significant turning point occurred in his work in the early '40s, when he inclined towards Arcaic sculpture. Indeed, Sterenshuss began his path of Abstraction, to which he comitted himself for many years.

 

From Dr. Gideon Ofrat's article "Women, Cylinders and Cones" - Moshe Sterenshuss: Other beginnings of Israeli abstract sculpture, "Studio" , January 1992.

 

The great majority of his sculptures are small-scale works - the height of the largest of these is 90 - 100 cm. - and there are also some 11 outdoor sculptures and reliefs in various places in Israel. The materials Sterenshuss used for his sculptures are varied: Cement, terracota and concrete, aluminum, bronze and poliaster, wood and iron. Thus one cannot identify Sterenshuss's sculptures by their materials, but one can conclude that he preferred the technic of adding (as opposed to subtracting from a mass), and the use of flexible materials. Also conspicious is the fact that in the sculptures that comprise a combination of complete units, each of the units was made by Sterenshuss himself; He made no use of "Readymades". There is nothing random in his sculptures. All of Sterenshuss's sculptures were preceeded by detailed preliminary drawings; frequently, even after prolonged work, ideas for a sculpture remained on paper and were not implemented in material. In his sculptural oeuvre we may discem the yoke of discipline, the rules and limits of "comme il faut".

 

From  Irith Hadar's introduction  to the book "Moshe Sterenshuss: Volumes and Lines" Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 2001.