FEATURED ARTIST -  May 2008

Chaim Soutine (1893-1943)

Born in Belarus in 1893, Soutine decided to study art in Vilna. He then moved to  Paris where he worked alongside such artists as Chagall, Modigliani and Jacques Lipchits.  Beyond this small circle, Soutine led a largely isolated life. While artistic movements, some of them originating in Paris, made waves throughout Europe – Cubism, Futurism, Dada and Surrealism – Soutine remained relatively unimpressed by these ramifications of modernism and instead cultivated a distinctive, highly intense painting of his own, informed with an unprecedented degree of profound and palpable emotion.

Le Village	La Table	Les Maisons

 His pictures are freighted with the tension of collapsing perspective and hyperbolically distorted figuration, reinforced by a powerful, gestural brushstroke. The revolutionary potential inherent in this painting exerted an influence well into the 20th-century and was a seminal force in the work of artists like Francis Bacon or Willem de Kooning. Paradoxically, Soutine is as much a visionary as he is a traditionalist: he was quite indifferent to one of the greatest achievements of modernism, the freedom of subject matter. There is, in fact, not a single subject in Soutine’s art for which one could not find a 17th-century model.

L'enfant au Jouet	Filette	The Pastry Chef (Baker Boy)

Obsessed by form and colour, often depressed and dissatisfied, Soutine destroyed many paintings during bouts of despair and produced the majority of his works from 1920 to 1929. He seldom showed his works, but he did take part in the exhibition of Independent Art held in 1937 in Paris, where he was at last hailed as a great painter. Soon thereafter France was invaded by German troops. As a Jew, Soutine had to escape from the French capital and hide in order to avoid arrest by the Gestapo. He moved from one place to another and was sometimes forced to seek shelter in forests, sleeping outdoors. Suffering from a stomach ulcer and bleeding badly, he left a safe hiding place for Paris in order to undergo emergency surgery, which failed to save his life.

Return from School after the Storm	The Storm

On August 9, 1943, Chaim Soutine died of a perforated ulcer. Soutine was interred in Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris. After his death his vivid colors and passionate handling of paint gained him recognition as one of the foremost Expressionist painters.

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