An Expressionist in Paris

Book excerpt: Born near Minsk in White Russia, the painter Chaim Soutine (1894-1943) created his major works in France between the two World Wars. He is identified with the School of Paris, the group of artists, many of them foreign-born and Jewish, who lived and worked in the French capital between the wars. Known as a "painter's painter", Soutine worked with unreserved gesture and emotion, using exuberant color, thickly applied paint, and sweeping brushwork. Chaim Soutine is a comprehensive, ground-breaking book that rediscovers this important artist, providing an overview of his life, work, and aesthetic influence, as well as his critical reception. Essays by leading scholars and curators assess Soutine's art from new vantage points, including the changing critical reception of his work in Paris between the wars, as well as in the US and France in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust. The essays also examine the influence of Soutine's Jewish and French immigrant background on his work and reception, and introduce us to his important patrons and major collectors. These included Albert Barnes, the famous Philadelphia collector, who discovered Soutine's work in 1922-23 and purchased 52 of his paintings. The book features presentations and information never published before, including a photo-essay composed of rare photographs of the artist, newly discovered correspondence between Soutine and the French art historian Elie Faure, and the first radiographic analysis of the artist's work, which brings to light new evidence about Soutine's use of materials and his process of painting.