Claire Bernardi Knihy

Clenched, raw, and pressingly urgent, Chaïm Soutine’s vivid paintings testify to human vulnerability and existence on society's margins. His intensely colored, meaty impasto portraits are created with broad brushstrokes, while his agitated landscapes and depictions of slaughtered animals express a profound hunger for life alongside deep alienation in an unstable world. Despite recognition, Soutine remained an outsider, disconnected from the social norms of his adopted France. This catalogue highlights his early masterpieces from 1919 to 1925, exploring themes of emigration and uprooting. Contributions reveal traces of Soutine’s Jewish origins, emphasizing the significance of his motifs from society's fringes and the symbolism of blood and carcasses. Soutine, born in a shtetl near Minsk in 1893, faced poverty, religious rigor, and social exclusion. He arrived in Paris in 1913, joining the artist residence “La Ruche” alongside Chagall and Modigliani. Fleeing the Nazis, he died in 1943, yet the international attention his work garnered since the 1920s continued to influence post-war art, inspiring movements like Abstract Expressionism and contemporary figurative painting.