Chaïm Soutine

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Chaïm Soutine
Chaim Soutine with signature.jpg
Chaim Soutine (with signature)
Born
Chaim-Iche Solomonovich Sutin (Хаим-Иче Соломонович Сутин)

13 January 1893 (1893-01-13)
Smilavichy, Minsk Governorate, Russian Empire
Died9 August 1943 (1943-08-10) (aged 50)
Paris, France
EducationVilna Academy of Fine Arts, École des Beaux-Arts, Fernand Cormon
Known forPainting
MovementExpressionism
Patron(s)Albert C. Barnes, Leopold Zborowski

Chaïm Soutine (13 January 1893 – 9 August 1943) was a Russian painter who made a major contribution to the expressionist movement while living and working in Paris.[1]

Inspired by classic painting in the European tradition, exemplified by the works of Rembrandt, Chardin[2] and Courbet, Soutine developed an individual style more concerned with shape, color, and texture over representation, which served as a bridge between more traditional approaches and the developing form of Abstract Expressionism.

Early life[]

A painting of a man
Amedeo Modigliani, Portrait of Soutine, 1916
A painting of a man
Amedeo Modigliani, Chaim Soutine, 1917, National Gallery of Art

Soutine was born Chaim-Iche Solomonovich Sutin, in Smilavichy in the Minsk Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Belarus). He was Jewish[3] 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).[4][5] From 1910 to 1913 he studied in Vilnius at a small art academy.[6] In 1913, with his friends Pinchus Kremegne and Michel Kikoine, he emigrated to Paris, where he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts under Fernand Cormon. 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 where he became friends with Amedeo Modigliani. Modigliani painted Soutine's portrait several times, most famously in 1917, on a door of an apartment belonging to Léopold Zborowski, who was their art dealer.[7] Zborowski supported Soutine through World War I, taking the struggling artist with him to Nice to escape the possible German invasion of Paris.

After the war Paul Guillaume, 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, on the French Riviera, 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 saw the blood from the carcass leak out onto the corridor outside Soutine's room, and rushed out screaming, "Someone has killed Soutine."[8] Soutine painted 10 works in this series, which have since become his most well-known. His carcass paintings were inspired by Rembrandt's still life of the same subject, Slaughtered Ox, which he discovered while studying the Old Masters in the Louvre. Soutine produced the majority of his works from 1920 to 1929. From 1930 to 1935, the interior designer Madeleine Castaing and her husband welcomed him to their summer home, the mansion of Lèves, becoming his patrons, so that Soutine could hold his first exhibition in Chicago 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 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, Soutine had to escape from the French capital and hide to avoid arrest by the Gestapo. 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, he left a safe hiding place for Paris for emergency surgery, which failed to save his life. On 9 August 1943, Chaim Soutine died of a perforated ulcer. He was interred in Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris.

Legacy[]

Eva

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.[9]

Roald Dahl placed him as a character in his 1952 short story "Skin".[10]

The Jewish Museum in New York has presented major exhibitions of Soutine's work in An Expressionist in Paris: The Paintings of Chaim Soutine[11] (1998) and Chaim Soutine: Flesh (2018).[12]

In 2020, Soutine's painting Eva became a symbol of pro-democracy protests in Belarus.[13][14]

Gallery[]

Portraits and figures

  • Self Portrait (1918) oil on canvas, 21.5 x 18 in., Henry and Rose Pearlman Collection, on long-term loan to the Princeton University Art Museum

  • The Idiot (c. 1920) oil on canvas, 36.2 x 25.5 in., Calvet Museum, Avignon

  • Farm Girl (1922) oil on canvas, 31.5 x 17.5 in., collection unknown

  • The Little Pastry Chef (1922–23) oil on canvas, 73 x 54 cm, Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris

  • Woman in Pink (c. 1924) oil on canvas, 73 x 54.3 cm., Saint Louis Art Museum

  • Portrait Of A Man With A Felt Hat (1924) oil on canvas, 36 x 28 in., collection unknown

  • Young Girl with a Doll (1926–1927) oil on canvas, 25.5 × 19.5 in., Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

  • Portrait of Madeleine Castaing (c. 1929) oil on canvas, 100 × 73 cm., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

  • Female Nude (1933) oil on canvas, 18 x 10.5 in., collection unknown

Still Lifes

  • The Table (c. 1923) oil on canvas, 35.8 x 39.3 in., Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris

  • Still Life with Rayfish (c. 1924) oil on canvas, 32 x 39.5 in., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

  • Still life with Pheasant (c. 1924) oil on canvas, dimensions unknown, Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris

  • Chicken Hung Before a Brick Wall (1925) oil on canvas, dimensions unknown, Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland

  • The Plucked Chicken (c. 1925), oil on canvas, dimensions unknown, Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris

  • Hanging Turkey (c. 1925) oil on millboard, dimensions unknown,

  • Carcass of Beef (c. 1925), oil on canvas, 53 x 32 in., Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York

Landscapes

  • Chemin de la Fontaine des Tins at Céret, ca. 1920, Henry and Rose Pearlman Collection on long-term loan to the Princeton University Art Museum

  • Chemin de la Fontaine Fils à Céret (1920) details unknown

  • View of Céret (ca. 1921–22) oil on canvas, Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation on long-term loan to the Princeton University Art Museum

  • Steeple of Saint-Pierre at Céret, ca. 1922, Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation on long-term loan to the Princeton University Art Museum

  • Landscape with Figures-Céret (1922) oil on canvas, dimensions unknown, High Museum of Art, Atlanta

  • View of Cagnes (c. 1924 –25) oil on canvas, 23.7 x 28.8 in., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

  • Return From School (c.1939) oil on canvas, 18 x 19.75 in., The Phillips Collcetion, Washington, D. C.

Footnotes[]

  1. ^ Getty Research Institute: Union List of Artist Names Online. Retrieved 20 June 2020.
  2. ^ Kleeblatt, 13
  3. ^ By Norman Kleeblatt, September 14, 2018, Hyperallergic
  4. ^ "Sarah Sutina". geni_family_tree. Retrieved 2020-10-19.
  5. ^ "Salomon Sutin". geni_family_tree. Retrieved 2020-10-19.
  6. ^ Giraudon, Colette (2003). "Soutine, Chaïm". Grove Art Online.
  7. ^ Kleeblatt et al., 101
  8. ^ Wullschlager, Jackie (2008). Chagall - Love and Exile. Allen Lane. p. 154. ISBN 978-0-7139-9652-4.
  9. ^ Mitchell Martin (1 June 2009). "Soutine Suit Settled Over Bargain Beef". ArtInfo. Archived from the original on 19 September 2018.
  10. ^ "Skin". 30 November 2015.
  11. ^ "An Expressionist in Paris: The Paintings of Chaim Soutine". The Jewish Museum. Retrieved 1 May 2018.
  12. ^ "Chaim Soutine: Flesh". The Jewish Museum. Retrieved 1 May 2018.
  13. ^ "Eva. How Most Expensive Painting In Belarus Became Symbol Of Protest". BelarusFeed. 2020-07-09. Retrieved 2021-03-01.
  14. ^ "How Eva, a $1.8 million Portrait, Became a Symbol of Protest". Bloomberg.com. 2020-06-29. Retrieved 2021-03-01.

References[]

  • Kleeblatt, Norman L.; Kenneth E. Silver (1998). An Expressionist in Paris: The Paintings of Chaim Soutine. New York City: Prestel. ISBN 3-7913-1932-9.
  • Mullin, Rick (2012). Soutine: A Poem. Loveland, Ohio: Dos Madres Press. ISBN 978-1-933675-68-8.
  • 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.
  • Soutine: The power and the fury of an eccentric genius by Stanley Meisler [1]
  • 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 2008 [2].

External links[]

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