Chaim Soutine

Chaim Soutine was a Lithuanian-born painter who became one of the most distinctive and emotionally intense voices within the School of Paris. Born in Smilavichy, near Minsk, in 1893, he immigrated to Paris in 1913 and settled in the bohemian enclave of La Ruche, where he befriended Amedeo Modigliani and Marc Chagall. Though loosely associated with Expressionism, Soutine resisted easy categorization. His work is characterized by convulsive, writhing brushwork, vivid and often dissonant color, and a visceral sense of psychological urgency that set him apart from both the French avant-garde and the broader Expressionist movement centered in Germany. Soutine's subject matter ranged from portraits of hotel bellboys, pastry cooks, and choirboys to raw animal carcasses, village landscapes, and still lifes. His series of hanging beef carcasses, inspired in part by Rembrandt's slaughtered ox, are among his most celebrated and unsettling works, anticipating later artists such as Francis Bacon in their confrontation with mortality and the body. His landscapes, particularly those painted in Ceret and Cagnes-sur-Mer in the south of France, depict villages and trees as though caught in violent motion, the architecture and foliage twisting and lurching across the canvas with barely contained energy. The American collector Albert C. Barnes purchased a large group of his works in 1923, dramatically elevating Soutine's reputation and financial standing almost overnight. Soutine's significance in the history of modern art is considerable, both for his innovations in painterly expression and for his influence on subsequent generations. His gestural, emotionally raw approach anticipated Abstract Expressionism and was openly admired by Willem de Kooning and other New York School painters. Despite suffering from poor health throughout his life, including severe gastric ulcers, he continued to paint prolifically until his death in Paris in 1943 under the German Occupation, when he was unable to receive adequate medical care due to his status as a Jewish foreigner. Retrospectives at institutions including the Jewish Museum in New York and the Centre Pompidou have helped cement his legacy as one of the great tragic and transformative figures of early twentieth-century painting.