Chaïm Soutine

Chaïm Soutine is a French painter born in Bielorussia - in the village of Smilovitchi, close to Minsk - in 1893. He died in Paris, the August 9th 1943.

He precociously developed a vision and a very particular technique of painting while using, not without refinement, a palette blazing in a Expressionnisme violent one and tormented.

Biography

Not very expansive, introverted and secret, Chaïm Soutine did not hold any newspaper and did not leave that few letters. The photographs the representative are rare. The little which we know of him comes from those which côtoyé it and the women who shared her life. “Soutine remained a enigma impossible to decipher until the end. Its fabrics are the only genuine keys which open the way of this diverting man. ”

Childhood

Chaïm Soutine is born in an orthodoxe family Jewish of Lithuanian origin from Smilovitch, a Shtetl of 400 inhabitants in Bielorussia. The living conditions being painful for the Jews under the Russian Empire, it passes a poor childhood there, in the traditions and the religious principles of the Talmud. His/her father earns his living like mender in a tailor. Chaïm (héb. " vie") is the tenth of eleven children. Shy person, it delivers himself little. The young boy prefers to draw with the detriment of his studies, often of the portraits of cross or côtoyées people. The rabbinical tradition being very hostile with the representation of the man, the young man is often punished. He follows nevertheless courses of drawing with his friend, Michel Kikoine, which shares same passion in 1907, with Minsk, where he was sent in 1902 like apprentice tailor in his brother-in-law.
Il is one day violently beaten by the son of a man of which it carried out the portrait. The mother of Chaïm carries felt sorry for and obtains from marked compensation for a score of roubles. This money makes it possible Soutine to leave the village for Vilna with Kikoine, in 1909 where their needs are ensured by certain Doctor Rafelkes. The two friends find an use of retouchers in a photographer. It become acquainted there with Deborah Melnik, a suction professional singer, with whom it will continue, later, her love affair in Paris.

In 1910, they pass their examination of entry to the school of the Art schools. There, a trio is formed with the meeting of Pinchus Krémègne. There the conversations turn around the capital of France where says one, of many artists, come from all horizons, create an art completely nouveau.
Seeing the occasion of émanciper, Krémègne leaves the first to Paris followed soon of Kikoïne in 1912. Doctor Rafelkes offers the financing of his voyage to him. Thus, while leaving for France, Chaïm breaks with its entourage and its past. There remain nothing of its works carried out during the period preceding its departure for Paris.

Paris

Krémègne accommodates it in Paris, the July 13rd 1913 and takes along it to the “the Hive”, a city of artists of the Quartier of Montparnasse. There are many foreign painters - that one will indicate soon like the École of Paris or the Jewish School. Dice its installation, it runs to the Musée of Louvre to discover what it knows only by the engravings seen at the School of the Art schools de Vilna. Fault of being able to recover the workshop that Chagall has just left, it divides that of its two found compatriots. Some time after, it is registered at the National school of the Art schools where Kikoïne is pupil. To remain, he works of night like carrier at the Montparnasse station. It is at that time that it feels the consecutive primary symptoms at years of deprivations.

Soutine keeps of its childhood of the morbid and obsessing memories of sufferings and poverty. He sees himself tracked by misery and tries to hang himself. He is saved in extremis by his friend Krémègne. These interior sufferings cause at his place a nervous tension which causes him gastric ulcers.

the Great War

Saturdays August 2nd 1914, the order of general mobilization is given. Soutine goes voluntary and hollow of the trenches, as a digger. It is however quickly reformed because of its fragile health condition. Listed as a Russian, it obtains Police headquarter of the 15th district, a residence permit under refugee.

Recluse, it keeps away from all artistic tendencies and settles in the Falguière City. It is there that the sculptor Jacques Lipchitz presents Amedeo Modigliani to him - also reformed because reached Tuberculose. Modigliani, its elder ten years, dedicates a real affection to him, becoming his/her friend and mentor.
Ils almost never eat with their hunger, is devoted to drink, will see the prostitutes. Soutine is divided between the workshops of his/her friends of “the Hive” and of Falguière, often goes to Livry-Gargan where Kikoïne lives with his wife. There low, it is lost in the ways in the search of a landscape which inspires it. It does not support to be observed during its work, withdrawing the fabric of the rest as soon as somebody approaches.

Modigliani presents it to its merchant, Léopold Zborowski which becomes also that of Soutine. In 1918, Modigliani must leave to be looked after with Vence, in and the request South of France with Soutine to join it.

Soutine returns to Paris in October 1919. Its former neighbor of workshop in the city Falguière, Pierre Brown, writes Céret to him, in the the Eastern Pyrenees and invites it to come to settle there. Soutine, which has evil to be done with Parisian life where the foreigners are disfigured with aggressiveness, accepts with enthusiasm. Zborowski pays him the voyage.

Céret

In Céret, it finds the painter Pierre Brune. Kikoïne comes to see it during a few months. At the end of January 1920, it learns death from Modigliani. Shaken by the disappearance of his friend, it ceases drinking and observes the recommendations of the doctors to feed. It is however too late for its ulcer. Ombrageux, coleric and wild, it lives with the variation of the artistic community. During nearly 2 years, it paints enormously. In summer 1920, Zborowski comes to seek nearly 200 fabrics. Then, made Soutine of frequent displacements between Céret and Cagnes until in 1922.

At that time, the arrival of a rich person American collector, Doctor Albert Coombs Barnes, puts artistic Paris in agitation. This one wishes to join together a collection of contemporary works for its foundation with Philadelphia. Zborowski successful to sell sixty painted fabrics to him in Céret and ensures the fame of Soutine thus. Paul Guillaume, one of the large Parisian merchants of written art: “One day that I had gone to see in a painter a table of Modigliani, I noticed, in a corner of the workshop, a work which, at once, filled with enthusiasm me. It was Soutine and that represented a pastrycook. A pastrycook amazing, attractive, real, truculent, afflicted with an ear immense and superb, unexpected and right, a masterpiece. I bought it. Doctor Barnes saw it at home the spontaneous pleasure that it tested in front of this fabric was to decide abrupt fortune of Soutine, making of this last, day at the following day, a known painter, sought amateurs, that which one does not smile any more…”

Soutine leaves for Cagnes where it paints a series of landscapes to the luminous colors. However, it does not like the area and its merchant warns about it to return to Paris. Haunted by questions of forms and colors, often dissatisfied of its work, Soutine disavows and flaring a great number of painted fabrics with Céret during access of despair.

From now on he saw comfortably, looks after his setting, improves in the French language by reading much and impassions himself for the music of Bach. He lives close to the Parc Montsouris and rents a roomy workshop. Its neighbors, horrified by the carcasses at animals which it preserves, complain about the putrid odors which emanate from its workshop. These skinned or broken animals that it takes as model, are the visions of its childhood which will characterize a good portion of its painting; like the series of the carcasses of oxen and that of poultries.

As for Zborowski, the merchant has from now on well-established, thanks to the notoriety of works of Soutine and Modigliani. Often, it recovers the lacerated fabrics that the painter judged bad to make them restore - what puts Soutine out of him when it realizes some.

In June 1927, the painter is not shown with the varnishing of the first exposure of its works. Hostile with this kind of demonstration, there will be very little alive sound of it. It often remains in the house rented by Zborowski with the White, in the Indre and in the property of Marcellin and Madeleine Castaing with Lèves, close to Chartres. It bound of friendship with the couple, large art lovers, at the time of a cure with Chatelguyon, in 1928. Castaing have many relations like Blaise Cendrars, Erik Satie, Henry Miller. The tables of the painter are now present in prestigious collections.

In 1929, it paints the series of the trees with Vence when the economic crisis in the United States occurs. The American purchasers are done rare. The crisis gains Europe. In 1932, Zborowski is ruined. In March, in 43 years, he dies of an heart attack. Soutine holds its production in Castaing then. In 1935, to Chicago, 20 of its tables are exposed for the first time to the the United States. In 1937, Paris organizes an exposure to the Petit Palais. This year, it meets Gerda Groth, German Jewish refugee who fled the Nazi regime. When the war bursts, they leave together in the Yonne to Civry-on Serene, in summer 1939.

the Second world war

The May 15th 1940, Gerda is stopped as amenable allemande and is sent to the Vélodrome of winter, then with the Camp of Gurs in the Yrénées-Atlantiques. She there is released on intervention and will remain hidden with Carcassonne until the end of the war. She will never re-examine again Soutine.

Under Vichy, the Jews have the obligation to be made count. Soutine, tracked, carries out a clandestine life, often going back to Paris to be made look after. Although conscious of the danger to the Jews, Soutine does not seem to have made the necessary steps to flee France. Following a denouncement, it takes refuge with Champigny-on-Veude, close to Tours in Indre-et-Loire, with his new partner, Marie-Berthe Aurenche, former partner of max Ernst. It paints a certain number of landscapes in spite of its stomach cramps. Its ulcer worsens and it ceases painting at the end of July 1943. The July 31st in the morning, it is feverish and must be hospitalized. Before being transported, it goes to its workshop and burns its fabrics. At the hospital of Chinon, its state is considered to be critical: a Ulcère with internal bleeding is diagnosed. It should be operated. One directs it towards a Parisian private clinic of the 16th district. Controls of the occupied France must be avoided and the voyage appears longer than envisaged. Operated as of its arrival, the August 7th, it dies two days afterwards. Its burial takes place the August 11th in Paris, with the Cimetière of Montparnasse, in a concession belonging to the Aurenche family. Nothing was engraved on the tomb before the end war. 17 years after, in 1960, Marie-Berthe Aurenche commit suicide and are buried at its sides.

In spite of more or less long interruptions, Chaïm Soutine will have painted and destroyed much much until the end of its life.

Random links: