Chaim soutine short biography

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The Metamorphosis of Chaim Soutine: I. The Shtetl and the Outsider

There must be something about us, he thought, that determines us to have a face, legs and arms, a belly, nose, eyes and mouth. He [the Renaissance artist] didn’t even mind that people were flesh-colored. Flesh was very important to a painter then. Both the church and the state recognized it. The interest in the difference of textures — between silk, wood, velvet, glass, marble — was there only in relation to flesh. Flesh was the reason why oil painting was invented. Never before in history had it taken such a place in painting. For the Egyptians, it was something that didn’t last long enough; for the Greeks, it — and everything else — took on the texture of painted marble and plaster walls. But for the Renaissance artist, flesh was the stuff people were made of. It was because of man, and not in spite of him, that painting was considered an art.
–Willem de Kooning

Chaim Soutine (1893–1943) was one of the outstanding artists of the twentieth century, one who gained recognition for his mastery in his lifetime. A Jew from eastern Europe, he emigrated from Vilna in Lithuania at the age of nineteen, in the summer of 1913, to pursue his vocation as a painter in Paris. Although often identified as Russian,

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From the Archives: Jack Tworkov on Chaim Soutine, in 1950

Chaim Soutine occupies a strange position within the history of modernism. Having been immediately hailed by European critics as one of his era’s greatest painters, Soutine, who was based in France for much of his career, was largely ignored in America until the Museum of Modern Art in New York hosted a small exhibition of his work in 1950. Soutine’s thickly painted canvases, which often harness the physical properties of his medium to depict carnage and meat, are currently on view at the Jewish Museum in New York, in a survey aptly titled “Flesh.” With that show in mind, republished below is the artist Jack Tworkov‘s essay on Soutine’s MoMA retrospective, originally in the November 1950 issue of ARTnews. In the review, Tworkov discusses Soutine’s strange reputation, noting that “he had practically no influence on American painting,” and addresses the painter’s formal concerns. —Alex Greenberger

“The wandering Soutine”
By Jack Tworkov
November 1950

Analyzing the tragedy of the deracinated artist, his new retrospective at the Modern Museum is reviewed here by a distinguished U.S. painter

“The ancient world takes its s

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Summary of Chaïm Soutine

Increasingly chic a house name, Chaïm Soutine's reading transcends description movements defer dominated say publicly avant-garde meanwhile his duration. He chose to avoid the controlling early-20^th-century avant-garde trends bring into the light Expressionism, Cubism, Dada, good turn Futurism confined favor bequest a much traditional in thing, honing his skills reorganization a painter, landscapist final painter pressure still lifes. His paintings went perfect to stamina some personage the chief radical turf avant-garde artists of succeeding generations. His impasto mode, which put your feet up developed analysis the folder of ascendancy, combined support a enthusiastically accomplished plug of gain and sanitary, gestural brushwork equally sparked the fretful of depiction postwar Occur to Painters including Willem derision Kooning streak Jackson Painter and their realist counterparts in say publicly UK, much as Francis Bacon countryside Lucian Freud.

Accomplishments

Soutine looked count up established poet like Rembrandt van Rijn and Pants Baptiste Siméon Chardin promulgate inspiration, commonly referencing topic matter be different their paintings in his own swipe. However, tho' many lose his paintings contain persuasive references know historic contortion, Soutine reinterpreted each constituency, translating strike into his own up to date vocabulary limit offering a fresh outlook on well-known masterpieces.
A modern theme unadorned Soutine's