James Picard - Artist of August 2005

***August 2005***

Chaim Soutine
1893 – August 9, 1943

Chaïm Soutine was born in Russia, the 10th child of a Jewish family living in a Lithuanian ghetto near Minsk, Belarus. He was brought up in the strict observance of the Jewish orthodox religion, but as a teenager rebelled against his father, who was a tailor, and managed to attend the Academy of Fine Arts of Vilno at 14 before settling in Paris in 1911. There he was admitted at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and worked under the painter Fernand Cormon.

Living in one of the famous studios of la Ruche near Montparnasse he befriended fellow artists Chagall and Modigliani, sharing a room with the latter. Soutine’s painting was greatly influenced by the teachings of Fauvism and Cubism and, like his friend Modigliani, tended to focus on portraits.

Soutine was prone to violent rages and bouts of depression and attempted suicide on more than one occasion. Ill-tempered and unsociable, he often destroyed his own creations and once kept an animal carcass in his apartment for weeks while painting his canvas entitled ‘Carcass of Beef’.

His work became more bizarre, as did his behaviour, when in 1920, his close friend and fellow artist Modigliani died. He continued to work intensely but rarely exhibited his work. Around this time, the American collector Dr. Barnes invested heavily in Soutine’s work, purchasing one hundred pieces. This seemed to push Soutine to create in an obsessive manner. He began painting landscapes and still-life along with his portraiture and became fascinated by form and colour.

Finally, in 1937, he exhibited his work in the Exhibition of Independent Art held in Paris and was at last hailed as a great painter. Commenting on his new-found fame, he said that if he had failed in his attempt to become a great artist he would probably have given up painting to become a boxer.

His glory was short-lived however, since a few months after the invasion of France by German troops he had to flee the French capital and live like a fugitive in order to escape arrest by the hands of the Gestapo or the Vichy police. Humiliated and persecuted, he had to move from one place to another and was sometimes forced to seek shelter in forests, sleeping outside at night. Suffering from a stomach ulcer and bleeding badly he had to leave a safe hiding place in order to undergo urgent surgery.

After a perilous travel during which he was hidden in a hearse, he died due to complications from surgery a few hours after his operation in a Paris hospital on August 9th 1943, only two weeks before the French capital was freed by Allied troops.

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