Chaïm Soutine (13 January 1893 – 9 August 1943) was a Belarusian painter who made a major contribution to the
expressionist
Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...
movement while living and working in Paris.
Inspired by classic painting in the European tradition, exemplified by the works of
Rembrandt
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (, ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally consid ...
,
Chardin and
Courbet
Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet ( , , ; 10 June 1819 – 31 December 1877) was a French painter who led the Realism movement in 19th-century French painting. Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and t ...
, Soutine developed an individual style more concerned with shape, color, and texture than representation, which served as a bridge between more traditional approaches and the developing form of
Abstract Expressionism
Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the ...
.
Early life
Soutine was born Chaim-Iche Solomonovich Sutin, in
Smilavičy
Smilavičy ( be, Смілавічы; pl, Śmiłowicze; russian: Смило́вичи, Smilovichi; yi, סמילאָוויץ, Smilovitz) is a city in Belarus in the Chervyen District of Minsk Region, located at at 156 m altitude.Minsk Governorate
The Minsk Governorate (russian: Минская губерния, Belarusian: ) or Government of Minsk was a governorate ('' guberniya'') of the Russian Empire. The seat was in Minsk. It was created in 1793 from the land acquired in the partition ...
of the
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...
(present-day
Belarus
Belarus,, , ; alternatively and formerly known as Byelorussia (from Russian ). officially the Republic of Belarus,; rus, Республика Беларусь, Respublika Belarus. is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by R ...
). He was
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
and the tenth of eleven children born to parents Zalman (also reported as Solomon and Salomon) Moiseevich Sutin (1858–1932) and Sarah Sutina (née Khlamovna) (died in 1938). From 1910 to 1913 he studied in
Vilnius
Vilnius ( , ; see also other names) is the capital and largest city of Lithuania, with a population of 592,389 (according to the state register) or 625,107 (according to the municipality of Vilnius). The population of Vilnius's functional urb ...
at a small art academy. In 1913, with his friends
Pinchus Kremegne
Pinchus Krémègne, aka Pinchus Kremegne ( he, פנחס קרמין; russian: Пинхус Кремень; 28 July 1890 – 5 April 1981), was a Lithuanian Jewish-French artist, primarily known as a sculptor, painter and lithographer.
He was ...
and
Michel Kikoine
Michel Kikoïne ( be, Міхаіл Кікоін; russian: Михаил Кико́ин, ''Michail Kikóin''; 31 May 1892 – 4 November 1968) was a Lithuanian Jewish-French painter.
Life
Kikoine was born in Rechytsa, present-day Belarus. The ...
, he emigrated to Paris, where he studied at the
École des Beaux-Arts
École des Beaux-Arts (; ) refers to a number of influential art schools in France. The term is associated with the Beaux-Arts style in architecture and city planning that thrived in France and other countries during the late nineteenth century ...
under
Fernand Cormon
Fernand Cormon (24 December 1845 – 20 March 1924) was a French painter born in Paris. He became a pupil of Alexandre Cabanel, Eugène Fromentin, and Jean-François Portaels, and one of the leading historical painters of modern France.
Biograph ...
. He soon developed a highly personal vision and painting technique.
Career
For a time, he and his friends lived at
La Ruche, a residence for struggling artists in
Montparnasse
Montparnasse () is an area in the south of Paris, France, on the left bank of the river Seine, centred at the crossroads of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail. Montparnasse has bee ...
where he became friends with
Amedeo Modigliani
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (, ; 12 July 1884 – 24 January 1920) was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. He is known for portraits and nudes in a modern style characterized by a surreal elongation of faces, necks, and ...
. Modigliani painted Soutine's portrait several times, most famously in 1917, on a door of an apartment belonging to
Léopold Zborowski
Léopold Zborowski (1889–1932) was a Polish poet, writer and art dealer. He was born in Zaleszczyki into a Jewish family.
Zborowski and his wife Anna (Hanka Zborowska) were contemporaries with Parisian artists such as Chaïm Soutine, André De ...
, who was their art dealer. Zborowski supported Soutine through World War I, taking the struggling artist with him to
Nice
Nice ( , ; Niçard: , classical norm, or , nonstandard, ; it, Nizza ; lij, Nissa; grc, Νίκαια; la, Nicaea) is the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes department in France. The Nice agglomeration extends far beyond the administrative c ...
to escape the possible
German invasion of Paris.
After the war
Paul Guillaume
Paul Guillaume (1891 in Paris – 1934 in Paris) was a French art dealer. Dealer of Chaïm Soutine and Amedeo Modigliani, he was one of the first to organize African art exhibitions. He also bought and sold many works from cutting-edge artists of ...
, a highly influential art dealer, began to champion Soutine's work. In 1923, in a showing arranged by Guillaume, the prominent American collector
Albert C. Barnes, bought 60 of Soutine's paintings on the spot. Soutine, who had been virtually penniless in his years in Paris, immediately took the money, ran into the street, hailed a Paris taxi, and ordered the driver to take him to
Nice
Nice ( , ; Niçard: , classical norm, or , nonstandard, ; it, Nizza ; lij, Nissa; grc, Νίκαια; la, Nicaea) is the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes department in France. The Nice agglomeration extends far beyond the administrative c ...
, on the
French Riviera
The French Riviera (known in French as the ; oc, Còsta d'Azur ; literal translation " Azure Coast") is the Mediterranean coastline of the southeast corner of France. There is no official boundary, but it is usually considered to extend fro ...
, more than 400 miles away.
Carcass paintings
Soutine once horrified his neighbours by keeping an animal carcass in his studio so that he could paint it (''Carcass of Beef''). The stench drove them to send for the police, whom Soutine promptly lectured on the relative importance of art over hygiene. There's a story that
Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall; russian: link=no, Марк Заха́рович Шага́л ; be, Марк Захаравіч Шагал . (born Moishe Shagal; 28 March 1985) was a Russian-French artist. An early modernism, modernist, he was associated with se ...
saw the blood from the carcass leak out onto the corridor outside Soutine's room, and rushed out screaming, "Someone has killed Soutine." Soutine painted 10 works in this series, which have since become his most well-known. His carcass paintings were inspired by
Rembrandt
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (, ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally consid ...
's still life of the same subject, ''
Slaughtered Ox
''Slaughtered Ox'', also known as ''Flayed Ox'', ''Side of Beef'', or ''Carcass of Beef'', is a 1655 oil on beech panel still life painting by Rembrandt. It has been in the collection of the Louvre in Paris since 1857. A similar painting is i ...
'', which he discovered while studying the
in the
Louvre
The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the ''Venus de Milo''. A central l ...
.
Soutine produced the majority of his works from 1920 to 1929. From 1930 to 1935, the interior designer
Madeleine Castaing
Madeleine Castaing (, Magistry; 1894–1992) was a French antiques dealer and interior designer of international renown. She was the friend and the Sponsor (commercial), sponsor of many artists, including Soutine, who made her portrait in 1928. Or ...
and her husband welcomed him to their summer home, the mansion of
Lèves
Lèves () is a commune in the Eure-et-Loir department in Northern France.
Population
International relations
Lèves is twinned with the English town of Nailsworth, Gloucestershire.
See also
*Communes of the Eure-et-Loir department
The fol ...
, becoming his
patron
Patronage is the support, encouragement, privilege, or financial aid that an organization or individual bestows on another. In the history of art, arts patronage refers to the support that kings, popes, and the wealthy have provided to artists su ...
s, so that Soutine could hold his first exhibition in
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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in 1935. He seldom showed his works, but he did take part in the important exhibition ''The Origins and Development of International Independent Art'' held at the
Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume
Jeu de Paume ( en, Real Tennis Court) is an arts centre for modern and postmodern photography and media. It is located in the north corner (west side) of the Tuileries Gardens next to the Place de la Concorde in Paris. In 2004, Galerie Nationale ...
in 1937 in Paris, where he was at last hailed as a great painter.
German invasion
Soon afterwards France was invaded by German troops. As a
Jew
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""Th ...
, Soutine had to escape from the French capital and hide to avoid arrest by the
Gestapo
The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one organi ...
. He moved from one place to another and was sometimes forced to seek shelter in forests, sleeping outdoors.
Illness and death
Suffering from a stomach ulcer and bleeding badly, Soutine left a safe hiding place for Paris for emergency surgery, which failed to save his life. On 9 August 1943, he died of a perforated ulcer. He was interred in
Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris.
Legacy
In February 2006, an oil painting of his controversial and iconic series ''Le Bœuf Écorché'' (1924) sold for a record £7.8 million ($13.8 million) to an anonymous buyer at a Christie's auction held in London—after it was estimated to fetch £4.8 million. In February 2007, a 1921 portrait of an unidentified man with a red scarf (''L'Homme au Foulard Rouge'') sold for $17.2 million—a new record—at Sotheby's London auction house. In May 2015, ''Le Bœuf'', circa 1923, oil on canvas, achieved a record price for the artist of $28,165,000 at the Christie's curated auction ''Looking forward to the past''.
One of the beef paintings, known as ''Le boeuf'', was sold for $1 million in 2004 and resold six months later for twice that price to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.. Heirs of the first seller sued to have the painting returned, claiming the price was unfairly low, and a complex settlement in 2009 required the painting to be transferred to them.
Roald Dahl
Roald Dahl (13 September 1916 – 23 November 1990) was a British novelist, short-story writer, poet, screenwriter, and wartime fighter ace of Norwegian descent. His books have sold more than 250 million copies worldwide. Dahl has be ...
placed him as a character in his 1952 short story "
Skin
Skin is the layer of usually soft, flexible outer tissue covering the body of a vertebrate animal, with three main functions: protection, regulation, and sensation.
Other cuticle, animal coverings, such as the arthropod exoskeleton, have diffe ...
".
The Jewish Museum in New York has presented major exhibitions of Soutine's work in ''An Expressionist in Paris: The Paintings of Chaim Soutine'' (1998) and ''Chaim Soutine: Flesh'' (2018).
In 2020, Soutine's painting ''Eva'' became a symbol of pro-democracy protests in Belarus.
Gallery
Portraits and figures
File:1918, Soutine, Self Portrait.jpg, ''Self Portrait'' (1918) oil on canvas, 21.5 × 18 in., Henry and Rose Pearlman Collection, on long-term loan to the Princeton University Art Museum
File:Musée Calvet Soutine Chaïm L'Idiot.jpg, ''The Idiot'' (c. 1920) oil on canvas, 36.2 × 25.5 in., Calvet Museum, Avignon
File:Farm Girl (1922) oil on canvas, 31.5 x 17.5 in., collection unknown.jpg, ''Farm Girl'' (1922) oil on canvas, 31.5 × 17.5 in., collection unknown
File:Chaïm Soutine - Le Petit Pâtissier.jpg, ''The Little Pastry Chef'' (1922–23) oil on canvas, 73 × 54 cm, Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris
File:Chaïm Soutine - Woman in Pink - 27-1992 - Saint Louis Art Museum.jpg, ''Woman in Pink'' (c. 1924) oil on canvas, 73 × 54.3 cm., Saint Louis Art Museum
File:Portrait Of A Man With A Felt Hat (1924) oil on canvas, 36 x 28 in., collection unknown.jpg, ''Portrait Of A Man With A Felt Hat'' (1924) oil on canvas, 36 × 28 in., collection unknown
File:Young Girl with a Doll (1926–1927) oil on canvas, 25.5 × 19.5 in., Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.jpg, Young Girl with a Doll (1926–1927) oil on canvas, 25.5 × 19.5 in., Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
File:Portrait of Madeleine Castaing.jpg, ''Portrait of Madeleine Castaing'' (c. 1929) oil on canvas, 100 × 73 cm., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
File:Female Nude (1933) oil on canvas, 18 x 10.5 in., collection unknown.jpg, ''Female Nude'' (1933) oil on canvas, 18 × 10.5 in., collection unknown
Still Lifes
File:Soutine, La Table, c. 1919.jpg, ''The Table'' (c. 1923) oil on canvas, 35.8 x 39.3 in., Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris
File:Still Life with Rayfish MET DT4177.jpg, ''Still Life with Rayfish'' (c. 1924) oil on canvas, 32 × 39.5 in., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
File:Soutine-2014-08.jpg, ''Still life with Pheasant'' (c. 1924) oil on canvas, dimensions unknown, Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris
File:Chicken Hung Before a Brick Wall by Chaim Soutine.jpg, ''Chicken Hung Before a Brick Wall'' (1925) oil on canvas, dimensions unknown, Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland
File:Soutine-2014-06.jpg, ''The Plucked Chicken'' (c. 1925), oil on canvas, dimensions unknown, Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris
File:Hanging Turkey by Chaim Soutine, c. 1925, oil on millboard.jpg, ''Hanging Turkey'' (c. 1925) oil on millboard, dimensions unknown,
File:Carcass of Beef by Chaim Soutine, c. 1925, Albright-Knox Art Gallery.jpg, ''Carcass of Beef'' (c. 1925), oil on canvas, 53 × 32 in., Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York
Landscapes
File:1920, Soutine, Chemin de la Fontaine des Tins at Céret.jpg, ''Chemin de la Fontaine des Tins at Céret
Céret (; ) is a commune in the Pyrénées-Orientales department in southern France. It is the capital of the historic Catalan comarca of Vallespir.
Geography
The town lies in the foothills of the Pyrénées mountains, in southern France. ...
'', c. 1920, Henry and Rose Pearlman Collection on long-term loan to the Princeton University Art Museum
File:Soutine - Chemin Fontaine Fils à Céret (1920).jpg, ''Chemin de la Fontaine Fils à Céret'' (1920) details unknown
File:View of Ceret, by Chaim Soutine, Russian active in France, c. 1921-1922, oil on canvas - Princeton University Art Museum - DSC06974.jpg, ''View of Céret'' (c. 1921–22) oil on canvas, Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation on long-term loan to the Princeton University Art Museum
File:1922, Soutine, Steeple of Saint-Pierre at Céret.jpg, ''Steeple of Saint-Pierre at Céret'', c. 1922, Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation on long-term loan to the Princeton University Art Museum
File:'Landscape with Figures-Céret' by Chaïm Soutine, 1922, High Museum of Art.JPG, ''Landscape with Figures-Céret'' (1922) oil on canvas, dimensions unknown, High Museum of Art, Atlanta
File:View of Cagnes MET DT4178.jpg, View of Cagnes (c. 1924 –25) oil on canvas, 23.7 × 28.8 in., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
File:Return From School (c.1939) oil on canvas, 18 x 19.75 in., The Phillips Collcetion, Washington, D. C.jpg, ''Return From School'' (c. 1939) oil on canvas, 18 × 19.75 in., The Phillips Collcetion, Washington, D. C.
Footnotes
References
*
*
* Tuchman, Maurice;
Chaim Soutine (1893–1943) ', Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1968
* Tuchman, Maurice; Esti Dunow (1993) ''Chaim Soutine (1893–1943): catalogue raisonné''. Köln: Benedikt Taschen Verlag.
* ''Chaïm Soutine and his Contemporaries: from Russia to Paris'', Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, 2012,
* Soutine: The power and the fury of an eccentric genius by Stanley Meisle
* Ifkovic, Ed. Soutine in Exile: A Novel. Createspace, 2017.
* ''Chaïm Soutine'', documentary film by Valérie Firla, written by Valérie Firla and Murielle Levy, 52 min, Les Productions du Golem, Ed. Réunion des musées nationaux, broadcast in France in 200
External links
An artwork by Chaïm Soutineat th
Ben Urisite
Hecht MuseumNew record price for Soutine PaintingChaim Soutine: FleshChaim Soutine Museum - SmilovichyThe Yiddish Life of Chaim Soutine (1893-1943): New Materials
{{DEFAULTSORT:Soutine, Chaim
1893 births
1943 deaths
People from Chervyen District
People from Igumensky Uyezd
Belarusian Jews
Jews from the Russian Empire
Emigrants from the Russian Empire to France
French people of Belarusian-Jewish descent
Belarusian painters
Russian painters
French Expressionist painters
20th-century French painters
20th-century French male artists
French male painters
Jewish painters
Modern painters
School of Paris
Jewish School of Paris
Deaths from ulcers
Burials at Montparnasse Cemetery