Chaim Soutine
Chaim Soutine fits perfectly the image of the struggling, ‘troubled’ artist. Born in the Russian Empire to Jewish parents, he initially studied in Lithuania. However, by 1913 he had moved to Paris, becoming friends with Modigliani and Chagall. Renting a cheap studio in Montparnasse, Soutine produced a stream of work characterized by thick, violent brushstrokes. Despite the distortions and wild mark making, these melancholic and disturbed images stopped short of full abstraction. His subjects included portraits of chefs and choirboys, landscapes and still lifes of food. Best known are the ten paintings he made of beef carcasses, inspired by Rembrandt’s Flayed Ox. Famously, the stench of the rotting meat provoked his neighbors to report him to the police. Afflicted for years by poverty, depression and a lack of confidence, he enjoyed a sudden change of fortune when Albert Barnes bought sixty of his paintings in 1923. He came to be recognized as a seminal figure of Parisian Expressionism. He died during WW2 in occupied France while evading the Gestapo.
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