Born in Smilavichy, Belarus, 1893
Died in Paris, France, 1943

Soutine’s oeuvre encompasses some of the most profound and creatively complex works to emerge from the Modern era, recognized for their distinctive rawness and commanding physical presence. Deeply information by the turbulent social and political climate in which he was raised, Soutine approached painting as a device by which form could be freed from traditional conventions to fully express raw and intense emotions. Each work distinctly reveals a dense surface quality, realized by the artist’s impassioned brushstrokes, distressing and full of rigor, which lends each work a visceral immediacy that is synonymous with the work of Soutine.

Chaim Soutine was born in Smilovitchi, Belarus in 1893, and later settled in Paris in 1913, at the height of the Modern era, where he would continue to live and work for the remainder of his life. Devoted to studying paintings in the Louvre, he was enamored of Rembrandt's raw texturing and inspired by the unrelenting realism of 15th century painter Jean Fouquet. Contemporaries of Soutine’s, especially Modigliani, recognized the artist’s innate talent and Jacques Lipchitz spoke of his natural painterly gifts as “God-like,” and would greatly influence Soutine’s professional career as artist and creative trajectory. After years of desperate poverty in war-torn Paris, Soutine suddenly enjoyed worldwide fame with the arrival of Dr. Albert Barnes in November 1923, when the American collector purchased over fifty paintings by the artist. Today, Soutine’s work is held by numerous institutional collection including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh; Tate, London; Kunstmuseum, Basel; Musée de l’Organgerie, Paris; National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo; among many others.

Artwork © 2023 Chaim Soutine / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.