Soutine painting groom title in French. The genius from the town of Smilovichi

Once upon a time there lived an artist Chaim Soutine

Grigory Anisimov

Many artists who came from Russia, who left during the years of the revolution, before it and after it, were considered for a long time to be non-existent in their homeland. They lived in Paris and were classified as “French artists”. Chagall, Soutine, Zadkine, Lipchitz remained beyond the attention of art historians and critics. Chagall was more fortunate, the rest less so. Someone aptly called them silent geniuses. It is so indeed. Soutine is one of these forgotten ones. There are no books, albums, or monographs about him in Russian. And he wrote “Russian” in the documents, indicating his place of birth – Russia. Thanks to Ilya Ehrenburg: he was the first to write about Chaim Soutine. Perhaps for the first time in our magazine we publish an essay about the life and work of this great artist, who influenced the destinies of world art.

Either honey or a bitter cup,

Either hellfire or a temple,

Everything that was his is now yours.

Everything is for you. Dedicated to you.

B. Okudzhava

From a small unknown place near Minsk, the aspiring artist Soutine ended up in Paris. He dreamed about this city, he aspired to go there, he passionately dreamed about it, out of passion, alone with himself, he directly thought of becoming famous there. Mighty and abundant Rus' was a particularly difficult and cruel country for the Jewish youth. But Soutine loved her, saw her helplessness and naivety, although he never glorified her like Chagall, that is, he did not resurrect her in his works. Soutine was connected with the Russian-born Chagall by an extraordinary romanticism of sincerity. If Chagall created his sweet fairy tales, then Soutine was the Shakespeare of art, boldly resorting to tragic colors, looking into the abyss of hell.

He lived almost half as long as Chagall, but became on a par with him, although he is known much less in the world, which means only one thing: Soutine’s time will come.

Self-portrait. 1917

During the first ten years of his life in Paris (he arrived there in 1912), Soutine got quite hungry, got drunk, and got drunk. Paris is very good, beautiful, cozy, charming and wonderful when you have francs in your pocket. And Paris is repulsively cold and merciless when your pocket is empty. I can testify from my own experience.

A drastic change in Soutine’s life took place as if in a fairy tale: a kind uncle came and made him happy. An American philanthropist and collector bought all of Soutine's works for 20,000 francs in 1922.

With the advent of money, Soutine changed little: he was not very neat, and avoided women because of his extreme shyness. But his friends took care of him, dressed him up, gradually taught him good manners, and hired him decent housing. His relatives Smilovichi, where he was the tenth child in the family, moved further and further away from Soutine. His mother Sarah was a kind woman and barely had time to feed and serve her large family. Father was a tailor. Some books about Soutine say that his father’s name was Boruch, while others call him Solomon. Most likely, both are true - probably the name of the artist’s father was Boruch-Sholom. He was neither an outstanding scholar nor a man who has endless faith in the power of reason. He believed in his own hands as a worker and was the sole breadwinner for a whole horde of hungry mouths.

When Chaim developed a passion for drawing, his father encouraged his son to practice. But in an Orthodox town with strict observance of the laws of religion, it was strictly forbidden to draw what had already been created by G-d, so Chaim was beaten more than once, and when he set out to draw a rabbi, he was beaten half to death. There is a legend that the rabbi found out about this and gave Soutine twenty-five rubles. For which he went to Vilna and entered the art school.

Thin, lanky, sickly - that was Chaim Soutine. He drew avidly, huddled in a corner. They also said that Soutine failed the entrance exam the first time. He threw himself on his knees in front of the teachers and begged for permission to retake the test. And he passed. And he did.

Probably due to eternal malnutrition, Soutine had a stomach ulcer; he was constantly writhing in pain. Suffering was common on his face, framed by shaggy hair. Widely flared nostrils, thick red lips and burning eyes - this was the young man Soutine.

His differences from others were immediately noticeable - special tension, unusual manners, awkward movements. But the artistic instinct in him was so strong that drawing took him far from reality, into the magical worlds of fantasy, fiction, and passionate imagination. When he painted, his mind seemed to completely leave him - he saw nothing, heard nothing, understood nothing... His paintings reflected the artist’s face and soul. They were colorful, polysemantic, extremely expressive.

A. Modigliani. Portrait of Chaim Soutine. 1915

There is no art without the personality of the creator. In this sense, Soutine is an extremely subjective artist. It was a large theater in which one actor plays. There was Stanislavsky's theater of experience. There was Brecht's theater of alienation, there was Meyerhold's theater of biomechanics, Ionesco's theater of the absurd. Soutine combined everything in himself - and gave everything a sensitive, vigilant, insightful interpretation. You won't confuse him with anyone.

He embodied the truth of personal feelings with such force that he still shocks people with genuine drama.

I see Soutine as a mysterious, demonic figure. This is not Levitan with his autumn sadness, nor the Wanderers with their annoying realism. Soutine is a thunderstorm, an element, a hurricane. This is a new type of artist who tears the skin off objects, turns out the not always attractive human insides. Dostoevsky and Tolstoy did the same in literature. Soutine was engrossed in Balzac. The artistic poetry of this writer was to his liking: no romantic ideals. In some ways, Balzac is in tune with our time - they built and built socialism, but never completed it and fell headlong into capitalism with its predatory yellow fangs.

In Paris, Soutine entered the Cormon Academy. Behind the loud name was a private school. Moreover, it’s paid. Soutine had no money. He worked part-time, unloading wagons and barges. His friend Modigliani gave him one franc per day. Then they got drunk together in cheap cafes. Soutine fell asleep at a table or on a shabby couch with a random friend. In the morning, Soutine recovered his hangover and got to work.

He painted his canvases vigorously, passionately, giving all his best to the end. He walked away from the easel when his legs could no longer support him.

There are two ways of life: or you live, drawn by recklessness, recklessness, a daring dream that gives you no rest day or night. Or are you driven by sober calculation, the search for a better life, secure and comfortable. Balzac, beloved by Soutine, convincingly showed in his novels that money cannot buy true love, and wolf morality undermines all foundations and pushes people to make a deal with their conscience. Man's selfish aspirations lead to ruin. The Almighty provided Soutine with a talent of enormous strength, but deprived him of health. He lived only fifty years. Soutine followed the voice of the conscience of the artist, God's chosen one and worker. He worked tirelessly. Modigliani constantly told him: Soutine, you are a brilliant artist! And Soutine’s self-confidence strengthened and helped him endure all the difficulties. He reached the level of creativity that only a few achieve. Climbed to the mountain heights. Far below, mediocrities were swarming around, art dealers who looked like small shopkeepers. Cold artisans do not know true love, universal passions.

The accomplices have indifferent hearts and sticky, greedy fingers. It seemed to Soutine that they had no hearts at all, but only pistons. And he himself lived to the fullest, ascending in spirit into the divine cosmos.

This small-town guy, who had barely been taught how to use a handkerchief and wear silk shirts with cufflinks, realized that everyone must transcend himself in order to be himself. He never knew what to do to succeed. But he knew that his painting was new and unusual. Each of his portraits, landscapes, compositions, still lifes with the carcass of a slaughtered bull became a sign, a symbol, a generalized image of nature. The red gladioli were choking with screams, the people in his paintings were writhing from internal contradictions, it seemed as if they were being torn apart from the inside.

For Chaim Soutine, painting was a way of existence, food for the soul, air for the lungs. If his paints and canvases were taken away, he would immediately die on the bench in his studio. Painting contained an element of infinity, although it was right here, nearby, in the heart and in the tubes.

Once upon a time, Mikhail Kikoin, a native of the village of Rezhitsa, Vitebsk province, studied at the Vilna art school next to Soutine. Pavel Kremen, who came to Vilno from the village of Zheludka, also studied there. These village guys stayed together in Paris and were loyal friends and like-minded people to Soutine. They washed dishes, beat dust out of other people's carpets, swept the streets and helped each other survive.

Modigliani settled Soutine with the Russian sculptor Oscar Meshchaninov. He was originally from Vitebsk and left for Paris in 1907. By the time Soutine arrived in Paris, Meshchaninov had received recognition. He was friends with Picasso and Modigliani, with Diego Rivera and Zadkine.

Oscar Meshchaninov was an unusually kind, sympathetic and open person. Soutine adored him for his liveliness, complaisance and efficiency. Oscar could read Pushkin for hours. Soutine fell in love with Pushkin. At night, the giants of painting whispered something to Soutine. He clearly heard their voices. They stood next to his head - large, concentrated and significant. Here comes Titian. He quietly stood next to him, took a breath, and spoke, as if continuing an old conversation: “Listen, Chaim, look carefully at my “Self-Portrait”, at “Denarius of Caesar”, take into account the “Madonna of the Pisaro Family” and “Venus of Urbino”, perhaps this will be enough... And you will understand that the artist’s skill is a special grace of G-d. It's from heaven. The most furious oil painting without the proper talent can only produce ugly results.”

Carcass. 1925

Soutine listened to these talking ghosts. Before his eyes, they filled with life, began to flicker and glow, like instruments on an airplane at night.

– Where and when were you born? – this menacing old man with frowning eyebrows suddenly asked. – Numbers and locality are always important in the fate of an artist. “I was born in Belarus, in the town of Smilovichi on January 13, 1893,” Soutine immediately reported. Titian's smile.

- So you are Capricorn. The thirteenths are most often good days; astrology does not confirm superstitions about them. You were born near water, right? – Yes, maestro, we have the Dvina under our windows.

- Just think, I lived four centuries before you! And I like your painting. A real colorist. Giorgione and I worked a lot on color and style... I saw your exhibition in New York. Fine. But there is too much pain and suffering. We must rise above the personal, forget about troubles...

“It’s good for you to tell me, Titian,” Soutine suddenly became embittered. “You didn’t know hunger, you bought houses, you were surrounded by luxury, you were licked by rich ladies. And the orders are from Charles V, from the pope, from rich gentlemen...

- Why are you so confused, rude...

- Yes, you should go, Titian, to...

The ghost suddenly disappeared, and the noisy Amedeo appeared in his place.

– Why are you so confused, Soutine? - Modi asked cheerfully, taking out a pot-bellied bottle of wine, bread, cheese and tomatoes from his bag.

– Amedeo, I think I was talking with Titian... He praised me for my style.

- I thought so! The poor thing has gone completely crazy! You urgently need to take a sip.

Modigliani poured a full glass of wine and handed it to Soutine: “Here, take a sip!”

Soutine drank wine. Warmth spread throughout my body. It was not only the warmth of the wine, but also the degree of friendship. If not for Modi, Soutine would have had a hard time. Modi looked after him with the care of an affectionate mother. He arranged housing for him and gave him money.

Of course, it’s easy for Titian to say: he had houses, estates, villas, a good family - son Orazio, son Pomponio, daughter Lavinia. What do I have? Son – Cobalt blue spectral. Daughter - Prussian blue, second son - Cadmium red, purple. It’s good that my fellow countryman Ossip Zadkine took me in. We lived with him in the basement. Nearby were the famous slaughterhouses on the Boulevard Vaugirard. There I took out mascara, they willingly posed for me. Then Modi arranged for me to work with Leopold Zborowski on Rue Joseph-Bar. Leo loved me, but his wife Anna hated me. It’s always like this, the wives of our friends, if we don’t sleep with them, are a difficult, quarrelsome, intolerable crowd.

Confectioner. 1922

Recently I wrote “Still Life with Fish on a Platter”, “Girl in a Red Dress”, “Gladioli”, “Self-Portrait”, “Chefs”.

I worked so hard that stars began to jump in my eyes, I woke up at night in a cold sweat, stared into the darkness, and fell asleep again.

And who came to me? Michele himself, yes, yes! Eyebrowed, with wild eyes and a broken nose. “Well, buddy,” Michelangelo told me, “you took the theme of sorrow, suffering, impurity, and you paint ink, pouring blood on it.” What are you trying to achieve?

– I want to bring painting back to the great traditions.

- This is commendable, my friend. Have you seen the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel?

– Only on reproductions.

– I wonder what the people of the twentieth century understood? – Buonarroti gritted his teeth and looked at Soutine with the full force of his terrible, oppressive eyes.

– Greatness and power, pagan passion and the image of Christ as a formidable judge! “That’s what I understood,” Soutine said firmly and passionately.

– The purpose and meaning of my art are available to you, so I can talk to you freely...

When Soutine told his friends that great masters came to him at night and talked with him, they twirled their fingers at their temples:

- Should drink less!

Soutine chuckled, and thought to himself that most of all he was looking forward to meeting in a dream with the one whom he loved most of all. Of course, with Rembrandt.

And Rembrandt came to him. Square, good-natured, wearing a crimson beret and a light cloak thrown directly over a craft robe with loops over the shoulder. He sat down more comfortably at the table, took off his beret, smoothed his hair, and smiled. Soutine helpfully poured wine into glasses.

The guest looked the wine into the light and simply said, clinking his glass: “To art!”

And he drained his glass with pleasure. “You and I have a lot in common, Soutine, although you are a Jew and I am a Dutchman.” You are from a tailor's family, and I am from a miller's family. We both ran away from home early to become artists. Nationality in art means nothing!

Soutine and Paulette Jourdain with a dog. 1927

– I knew you’d say that! It is a great honor for me to see you and talk with you! Soutine's throat tightened.

– You have your own language, your own style. Without style there is no artist. Style is a child of love. And love is the healer of the spirit. Real painting heals a person better than any medicine. And bad painting spreads infection and makes a person disabled. I’ll tell you, Soutine, a secret: I like the tragedy in your works. You have a lot in common with Adrian Brouwer. There is mysticism and mystery in your works. There must be mystery in painting, as in a woman, as in nature. They are secretive and do not reveal themselves right away. This makes learning them fun. What is wide open is boring...

Rembrandt asks:

– I was told that you studied my works and went to Holland. What do you need this for? There are many painters in the world...

– What about your coloring? No one else has this. After you, Titian, Rubens, Carracci are obsolete for me. They faded. And Rembrandt van Rijn is like a bright star in the night sky.

- Thank you, brother. A kind word is a great gift for an artist. After all, we burn ourselves to the ground, and what do we hear for it?

Let me shake your hand. – Soutine extended his hand to him. And he immediately jumped up. There was no one in the workshop anymore. Only in the corner on the couch was Pauline snoring sweetly. She knew how to calm down and caress any drunkard.

Tree in the wind. 1942

Soutine really didn’t want to say goodbye so quickly to such a visitor who had just been with him, who spoke so intelligently, weightily, significantly. Without such people, the world is boring, monotonous, two-dimensional. How did Rembrandt say it? You, Soutine, says, you put your soul into your work, while others thrust their bills into painting, thrust in their pretensions, stinginess and their frog-like slipperiness. And you - the soul. What is there in the world more valuable, more significant and more mysterious than the soul? There is nothing more! Well said. Wise old man. Soulful. And how his eyes light up. Like a wolf, they burn. People will never part with him, never. He will be with them until life on earth ends. Eternal companion, constant wanderer Agasfer.

Soutine touched Pauline on the shoulder, he wanted warmth. - Pauline, I want to eat. Wake up!

Rembrandt's vision played in Soutine's brain like a film.

Although Chaim Soutine might seem to someone like a savage, touched, a slob and a drunkard, in painting he was an aristocrat and a genius, a free, proud and independent man. He chuckled to himself when he recalled stories about how Moscow patrons ordered paintings from Matisse, gave them the subjects and told the artist – do this for us by such and such a date, otherwise do it in such and such a size and bring it to Moscow in December. And Matisse tried.

Soutine unfolded a neatly newspaper-wrapped volume of Pushkin and read: “The poet himself chooses the subjects of his songs, and the crowd has no right to control his inspiration...” What a clever girl. The world has never seen anything like it!

This volume was published on tissue paper in 1899 to mark the centenary of the poet’s birth. And Oscar Meshchaninov gave it to Soutine. Soutine treasured this volume endlessly, as did Pushkin himself, whom he simply idolized. Having worked, he took out the treasured book and read large chunks of poems, verses, and dramatic scenes. And the words echoed through him, he trembled as if in a fever. Behind the rough appearance of Soutine, who looked like a commoner, an artisan, a tramp, there was hidden an intelligent man and an experienced professional who knew how to convey in painting the subtlest shades of complex mental states.

One of the great painters of the 20th century, Chaim Soutine remains to this day a “thing in itself.” From time to time they organize his exhibitions, and then again forget him for a long time. His paintings will be bought by Arab sheikhs, the Chaplin family, and the Rossellini family. Even Pablo Picasso will buy and hang in his studio Soutine’s painting “Paris at Night.” What fascinates them all - the chaos of brushstrokes, lines, the special Sustian energy, the pressure of tragedy, the nakedness of all living things? Honestly, I don't know. You had to ask the artist himself or his faithful wife and friend Marie-Berthe Orenche about this. They say that she subtly understood these matters. As only a loving heart can.

Soutine was childishly trusting. He believed in himself, in his own hands, like his father, who could sew a suit for the most fastidious tyrant. But in life he was a darner, that is, he repaired old clothes.

For Soutine, his work as a painter was the main and only law of life. He realized this when he climbed the tall fire tower in their town. From there an impressive panorama opened up, filling the soul with such inspired delight as a master experiences after a successful job or after intimacy with his beloved.

Gladioli. 1919

Judging by the painting, Soutine always looked directly and boldly into the eyes of his fate. He had everything to build a Utopia with flowers and roses, to evoke in himself Vera Pavlovna’s fourth dream, so richly and sweetly described by Chernyshevsky. But he believed more in Balzac, who looked at darkness and impurity until his eyes bled. And Pushkin’s golden poems lifted him up, helped him paint his paintings, in which the warmth of the divine breath was combined with love and passion.

He was grateful to his friends, thanks to them, their help, he became what he became. An example of the dedication of the artist, the conscience of the master, the honor and dignity of twentieth-century art. “All artists who are worthy of the Guild of St. Luke should be comrades, a brotherhood...” It seems that Rembrandt told him so during their short meeting. Why did the old sculptor and good-natured Alfred Boucher acquire buildings on Danzig Street and set up a Hive there for artists? After all, he could save money, spend it on girls and expensive food, and indulge his flesh?

That's what his heart told him, that's what his conscience told him to do. The artist Soutine heard the same call. His brush brought to life paintings executed in a harsh style. He acted like a surgeon, a pathologist, devoid of sentiment. He acted with conviction and efficiency. It’s time to cite one poem to fully understand Soutine. Here it is.

Do you remember what

what did we see in the summer?

My angel, do you remember

That dead horse under the bright

white light

Among the reddish grass?

Half-decayed, she, with her legs spread,

Like a street girl,

Shamelessly, belly up, lay

by the road,

Offensive, secreting pus.

And the sun scorched this rot from the sky,

To burn the remains to the ground,

So that the great Nature merged into one

Accepted disconnected.

And you, beauty, will be touched by decay too,

And you'll rot to the bone

Dressed in flowers for mournful prayers,

Extraction of coffin bones.

(Translation from French by V. Levik)

This was written by Charles Baudelaire. He died in 1867, when Soutine was not yet born, he died, confident in the invincibility of evil, in the depravity of life.

A whole generation of writers and

artists in the first thirty years of the 20th century were regulars at the Parisian cafes “Rotunda”, “Dome”, “Toulouse Negro”. It was not slackers and clowns who came there, but people who had done a good job. You can read about this from Hemingway, Ehrenburg, Poplavsky. Open Ehrenburg and you will find lines there that are directly related to the conversation about Soutine and his brothers. “In order for familiar words to excite, for a canvas or stone to come to life, you need breath, passion, and the artist burns faster - he lives for two, because in addition to creativity, he has his own shaggy, confused life, like all people, no less " The Paris-based writer Gertrude Stein thought that these people were a lost generation. It was she who coined the term “restless.” Nothing happened! Were Soutine and Chagall, Pascin and Shterenberg, Hemingway and Ehrenburg, Scott Fitzgerald and Modigliani lost? For whom? They lived with the passion of creativity, worked like crazy, and enriched humanity.

Bride. 1925

To use Hemingway's description, their talent was as natural as the pattern of pollen on a butterfly's wings. And this pattern has not worn out or faded in our 21st century. They created masterpieces, although they did not always have the money to eat properly. Soutine said that hunger and selflessness give birth to masterpieces, not satiety and well-being.

Rembrandt had a painting of the carcass of a killed bull. The beauty and variety of texture overcame the feeling of an unpleasant and ugly plot. All shades of red in the picture intensified and deepened the presence of raw meat, and the valers on the bluish tendons alternated between flashing and flickering. Only he could write that.

And many years later, Soutine took up this topic and solved it many times with incredible tragedy. It turned out that the still life is not a dead thing in his hands, but a living one - with smells, forms, full of movement, with striking transitions of line into volume. Soutine’s namesake Chaim-Yakov Lipchitz was perplexed: “Listen, Soutine, having seen enough of your painting, I can sculpt after you. With the help of volumes in space I draw light. Easel sculpture, like real painting, is completely autonomous in nature and parallel to it. They are necessary for man, like the sun.”

Soutine learned from Jacques Lipchitz the expressive deformation of nature. In this he had no equal. And the deformation did not interfere with the emotional imagery. It is no coincidence that Modigliani painted portraits of Lipchitz and Soutine, both of whom became internationally recognized pillars of modern art. Just like Amedeo himself.

Soutine tirelessly painted meat carcasses, plucked game, fish on a platter, and chickens. No other artist has produced so many works related to food. This man was well hungry. He died on August 9, 1943 in Paris from peritonitis. The city was occupied. Fearing the German police, many friends could not go outside. One person walked behind Soutine's coffin. It was Picasso.

Soutine. 1927

He was buried in the Montparnasse cemetery.

Soutine started from Vilna. Then in Paris he had his own workshop on Place Clem, overlooking the Seine. It reminded him of the brooding Dvina of his childhood.

Soutine showed the horror of reality, where everything is subject to inhuman laws. But still, apparently, not quite everything, if there is a place in the sun for people like Soutine. With good reason we can classify this master as a magic realism. This is a unique individual style, excited writing, white-hot painting, endless expression, when the brush creates on the canvas not exercises, but genuine music.

“While I was fasting, I learned to understand Cézanne much better,” Hemingway noted. People have learned to understand Soutine, at least they pay millions for him. Understanding is the prologue to love.

Groom. 1928

P.S. The seriously ill Modigliani said to Leopold Zbrovsky: don’t worry, in the person of Soutine I leave you a genius. Konstantin Korovin, not prone to compliments, considered Soutine one of the five best artists in the world. Modigliani painted a wonderful portrait of the young Soutine (1917). It is not at all similar to Soutine's Self-Portrait. He described himself as scary, clumsy, even ugly, looking like a Kalmyk. In Modigliani, his friend Soutine is calm, balanced, and in some ways even handsome, with his hands folded on his knees. Once they asked Soutine: “You lived a hard life, right, were you unhappy in life?”

- Where did you get this from? I have always been a happy person! – was Soutine’s answer. This was said cheerfully, even defiantly.

Chaim Soutine did not bend his soul. Yes, he was a happy man. Can a creator be unhappy? The almost completely blind Michelangelo, Mozart, suffocated from his plans, the deaf Beethoven, Pushkin brought to death - were they unhappy?

Chartres Cathedral. 1932

If you asked them such a question, everyone would answer like Soutine. They were driven through life by passion, creativity, it was not money that dictated their actions, it was not profit that they dreamed of. The burghers, ordinary people, and townsfolk are unhappy, but creators carry happiness within themselves. They weave it from a deceptive, unreliable web, but their biographies are often similar to the lives of saints.

Soutine had no spiritual peace. Creativity burned him out. With a brush in his hand, he was unusually enlightened. The wisest Pushkin wrote about such people: “And the heart burns again and loves because it cannot help but love.” Said on a specific occasion, about love for one woman. But Pushkin is such that these words can be given a completely different meaning.

This can be attributed to every true artist. Indeed, being an artist is not a profession. This is destiny!

Monthly literary and journalistic magazine and publishing house.

About the eccentricities of a mad artist Chaim Soutine there were legends: “He painted all his paintings naked, painted food before he ate it, even if he was very hungry, behaved ridiculously with women, looked like a slob and always lived in a terrible mess.”- this is how his contemporaries remembered him. And could he have imagined that over time his works, which he had previously sold for pennies, would be on the list of the most expensive paintings in the world, valued at tens of millions of dollars.

Many artists who left Russia during the revolution were for a long time completely unknown in their homeland. Living in Paris, they considered themselves “French artists.” Among them are Marc Chagall, Chaim Soutine, Zadkine, Lipchitz and other “silent geniuses” who have remained beyond the attention of Russian art historians. Chaim Solomonovich Soutine was also among these forgotten by his homeland, but all his life he wrote “Russian” in his documents and in the place of birth - “Russia”.

https://static.kulturologia.ru/files/u21941/219413060.jpg" alt="Bull carcass. Price: $28,165,750. Author: Chaim Soutine." title="Bull carcass. Price: $28,165,750.

The artist is widely known to the public in America and the West, his paintings adorn the world's largest museums and galleries, and unique paintings by Chaim Soutine constantly appear at auctions. For example, in 2016, “Bull Carcass” was sold for $28.165 million, and “Valet” – for $16.9 million, two years earlier, “The Little Confectioner” – for $18 million, “The Bride” – for $15.6 million. Today Many Russian collectors want to have in their collection the works of this unique artist, who is on a par with such famous figures of world art as Van Gogh, Munch, Picasso.

Flayed Bull

Flayed Bull
Canvas, oil. 129.8 x 75. Christie's. (2006). Price: £7,848,000.

Chaim Soutine is a mysterious and demonic figure in the history of art. From the words of eyewitnesses
"Писал он свои холсты бурно, горячо, выкладываясь до конца. Отходил от мольберта, когда уже ноги его не держали" !}. And he always drew naked... “not because he was an exhibitionist - there was no money for clothes. While working, he took off things so that they would not wear out.” Haim admired many of his contemporary artists for his brushwork, but he never joined any of the avant-garde movements emerging and developing in Paris at that time.

https://static.kulturologia.ru/files/u21941/0Sutin-0028.jpg" alt=" Self-portrait. (1918).

While still very young in 1913, from the town of Smilovichi, near Minsk, the aspiring artist left for Paris, where he dreamed, where he thought of becoming famous. And where he then lived in poverty for many years, having no money for food or clothing, he selflessly painted his canvases, not interested in anything around him. His models were prostitutes, and his still life subjects were stale carcasses from a nearby slaughterhouse. And in order to buy canvases and paints, he sold his works for mere pennies.

Chaim, constantly malnourished, brought food from the store and, suffering from hunger, first drew it and only then ate it... He became possessed, drooling at the thought of the upcoming “royal dinner”... it was as if his mind was completely leaving him - nothing I didn’t see, I didn’t hear anything, I didn’t understand anything...”

In Paris, Haim became close to Amedeo Modigliani and other artists who lived in the bohemian commune "The Beehive". His friends took care of him, dressed him up, gradually taught him good manners, and hired him decent housing. Very soon he and Amadeo became close friends, and the Italian constantly gave Soutine some money, introduced him to the right people, and brought models. Modigliani called Chaim a genius, supported him during the difficult years of Parisian emigration and painted his portrait. As a result, Soutine became one of the most prominent figures of the “Paris School” of art.

https://static.kulturologia.ru/files/u21941/0Sutin-0026.jpg" alt="Red Staircase in Caen. (1923). Oil on canvas. 73 x 54 Christie's. (2007). Price : 3,283,333 lbs." title="Red staircase in Caen. (1923). Canvas, oil. 73 x 54 Christie's.(2007). Price: £3,283,333." border="0" vspace="5">!}

Although big money and fame, thirty art exhibitions during the artist’s lifetime did not change the way of life of Chaim himself. The artist never knew what to do to achieve success. But he knew for sure that his painting was new and unusual.

https://static.kulturologia.ru/files/u21941/0Sutin-0015.jpg" alt="Woman in red.

https://static.kulturologia.ru/files/u21941/0Sutin-0027.jpg" alt="Valet. OK. 1927–1928. Canvas, oil. 109.2 x 63.2. Sotheby"s.(2010). Цена: 7 881 250 фунтов" title="Valet. OK. 1927–1928. Canvas, oil. 109.2 x 63.2. Sotheby"s.(2010). Цена: 7 881 250 фунтов" border="0" vspace="5">!}

Valet. OK. 1927–1928. Canvas, oil. 109.2 x 63.2. Sotheby's. (2010). Price: 7,881,250 pounds

Chaim painted a lot and the colors on his canvases did not stop “screaming”, but in life he was tormented by attacks of pain in his stomach: an ulcer, earned as a result of constant hunger, made itself felt. In August 1943 he was operated on, but nothing could be done. On his last day in occupied Paris, he was accompanied by Marie Aurenche and the artists Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau and Max Jacob.

At the exhibition at the Pushkin Museum

You can read about several fascinating pages from the life and work of Chaim Soutine, a close friend and fellow countryman, a famous artist

Chaim Soutine(Chaim Solomonovich Soutine, fr. Chaim Soutine, January 13, 1893, Smilovichi, Minsk province - August 9, 1943, Paris, France) - French artist of Jewish origin.

Biography

Chaim Soutine was born on January 13, 1893 in Smilovichi (Minsk province) into a poor Jewish large family (he was the tenth of eleven children), his father was a tailor (according to other sources, a synagogue servant. The craving for drawing, which appeared in Soutine very early, did not run in the family approved. In 1907 (at the age of 14) Soutine left home and went to Minsk, where he worked as a retoucher for a photographer and attended the drawing class of H. Kruger. In 1910, he and his friend Mikhail Kikoin moved to Vilna and entered the School of Fine Arts .

In 1913 (according to some sources - in 1912) Soutine went to Paris. Before moving to the Cité Falguières in the fifteenth arrondissement of Paris, Soutine lived and worked at La Ruche, the Hive, an international hostel for poor artists on the Left Bank of the Seine, which was created in 1902 by the sculptor Alfred Boucher. There he fell into the circle of young artists from different countries (M. Chagall, F. Léger, R. Delaunay, O. Zadkine, A. Archipenko and others), who later formed the so-called Parisian school. Soutine entered the School of Fine Arts, in Cormon's class. The highest artistic culture of Paris in the first half of the century influenced Soutine's work. Here he studies recognized works of classic painting, Greek and Egyptian sculpture, paintings by Goya, El Greco, Tintoretto, Jean Fouquet, Rembrandt, Corot and Chardin. Of his contemporaries, Soutine values ​​Courbet and Cézanne most. Soutine was interested in music and literature. His favorite authors included Montaigne, Racine, Seneca, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Balzac and Rimbaud, and his favorite composers included Bach and Mozart.

In 1914, Soutine met A. Modigliani, with whom he had a complex relationship of friendship and enmity. In 1918, Soutine lived with Modigliani in the south of France, and then visited there frequently for a number of years. All these years, Soutine suffered from poverty, a turning point occurred only in 1922, when the American collector A. Barnes (1872–1951) acquired 15 paintings by Soutine, which attracted attention to his work. In 1927, Soutine's first personal exhibition took place in Paris. It was followed by others - in Paris (1930), Chicago (1935), Washington (1943) and others. Soutine gained worldwide fame, his financial situation improved for a short time, but the artist was subject to severe depression, and his physical health was also disturbed. Despite this, Soutine worked furiously.

After years spent in the south of France, Soutine returned to Paris, where he moved into a spacious studio on the rue Mont Saint-Gautar, not far from Place Denfert-Rochereau. It was here that he would complete a series of bull carcasses and numerous still lifes with fish and birds.

During the German occupation of Paris, Soutine went into hiding, moved from place to place, then his friends settled him in Champigny, near Chinon; the artist did not stop working there. In 1943, Soutine became seriously ill, he was brought to Paris, admitted to the hospital, where he died.

Creation

Soutine was one of the creators of French expressionism. He developed as an artist very early. In the composition of early Parisian works, especially in still lifes, one can feel the influence of P. Cezanne (“Still Life with a Pipe”, 1914–15, Troyes, collection of P. Levy; “Still Life with Lemon”, 1916, New York, collection of I. Levick) .

By the beginning of the 1920s. Soutine's style was finally defined, and this was manifested primarily in the landscapes of the south of France: the writhing impasto strokes of his painting create a torn form; a rearing composition appears with a high, usually high, horizon and a large image close to the foreground (“Landscape of Seret”, 1920–21, Harvard University, Fogg Art Museum; “Landscape with Cypress Trees”, 1922–23, New York, collection of A. A. List).

In 1927, Soutine's first solo exhibition took place in one of the Parisian galleries. He met Marcelin and Madeleine Castaing, who, following Zborowski, would take custody of the artist. A couple of years later, Haim met art historian Eli Faure, who would write the first monograph dedicated to his work.

From that time on and throughout his life, the expressionist principle in Soutine’s work, inherent in him from his earliest works and especially manifested in the expressiveness of color, only intensified: he moved from frantic painting to even more frantic one. At the same time, Soutine never abandoned nature: he found all his subjects in the life around him, transforming the everyday into tragedy, into apocalyptic visions created only by pictorial means - a painful contradiction of color, a violent movement of the brush (“Gladioli”, 1921–22, New York). York, collection of R. Colin; "The Servant", 1928, Washington, National Gallery of Art; "Little Town Square", 1930, Chicago, Art Institute). The tragic perception of life is rooted in memories of childhood, of the Jewish environment, which Soutine refused all his life, overcoming its influence in himself, but could not overcome it.

In addition to landscape, Soutine's favorite genres were portrait and still life. In the portrait, Soutine was somewhat influenced by Modigliani: their works are close compositionally - like Modigliani, Soutine prefers a full-length or bust-length full-face image, close to the foreground and somewhat flattened, with a minimum amount of detail. Soutine's portraits are distinguished by contrasting color and the contrast between the sharp, exalted painting and the insignificance or ugliness of the faces of the subjects.

The French definition of this genre is most suitable for Soutine’s still lifes - “dead nature”; in most of them there is death in its cruel, unsightly form (“Meat Carcass”, 1925, New York, Albright-Knox Gallery of Art; “Hare on a Green Shutter”, 1924–25, Troyes, collection of P. Levy; “Hanging turkey", 1926, New York, collection of R. Zeisler). Compositionally, still lifes are organized much more strictly than landscapes, obeying mainly a vertical-horizontal rather than a diagonal rhythm.

The color scheme underwent the greatest changes in Soutine's work: in the 1920s. this is a chaotic interweaving of green, yellow, red, brown, purple, then the spots become larger, blood red becomes dominant, with which bright blue, sometimes purple, contrasts; in the late 1930s. green becomes the leading color, interspersed with all the other colors of the palette, strained to the limit and set off by sharp strokes of white (“Green Trees,” 1936, private collection; “Big Tree,” 1942, private collection).

In 1935, the artist's works were exhibited in the United States for the first time as part of a collective exhibition in Chicago. And after another 2 years, an exhibition of 12 paintings by the artist will take place at the Petit Palais State Museum in Paris as part of the collective exhibition “Masters of Independent Art 1895-1937”. There he meets a German woman, Gerda Groth, who is hiding from the Nazi regime - she will be his girlfriend for three years.

Chaim Soutine in culture

• Roald Dahl's short story "Skin" is about a tattoo done by Chaim Soutine.
• Chaim Soutine is one of the minor characters in the film Modigliani.

Links

Sources

" takes place at the Pushkin Museum named after. Pushkin. This entry contains Soutine's paintings from this exhibition. At the exhibition, the works are grouped by genre, but here, in part, not everything is in approximate chronological order.

Chaim Soutine. Chronicle of life and creativity

1893 (or 1894)

According to some sources, on June 9, according to others, on January 13, Chaim Soutine was born in the Jewish town of Smilovichi, which until 1917 was part of the Russian Empire (now the Republic of Belarus). The tenth of eleven children of Sarah and Zalman Sutin.

1903-1909

Enters the Kruger Academy.

Maria Vorobyova-Stebelskaya, pseudonym - Marevna:

“His passion for drawing was supported by his mother and the wise, kind village rabbi... When Soutine turned sixteen... he, along with Mikhail Kikoin... was sent to study with the real artist Kruger, who promised to make real artists out of them in two months.”

Circa 1919. Child with a toy. Obersteg Foundation (Im Obersteg Foundation), Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland / Chaïm Soutine. L"enfant au jouet, um 1919 /Kind mit Spielzeug /Child with a Toy. Öl auf Leinwand. 81 x 64.5 cm. Inv. Im 1521. Im Obersteg Foundation, Kunstmuseum Basel. . Original (4856 x 6136)

Moves to Vilna and enters a three-year course at the Vilna Drawing School I.P. Trutnev, recognized in 1904 as the best in Russia.

Marevna:

“Soutine did not like copying (he was not good at it), he did not like making sketches and generally drawing according to the generally accepted rules of art schools of that time.”

3.


Circa 1919. Table. Orangerie Museum / Chaïm Soutine. La Table. Vers 1919. Huile sur toile. 91 x 100. RF 1963 82. RMN-Grand Palais (musée de l'Orangerie) / Hervé Lewandowski.

1911-1913

Leaves Vilna and, together with Mikhail Kikoin, goes to Paris. Arrival dates vary. According to the first lifetime monograph on Soutine by Waldemar Georges, the artist arrived in Paris in 1911. The most scrupulous researcher of the master's life, Michel LeBrun-Franzaroli, citing police archives, writes that he ended up there on June 9, 1913. According to the memoirs of Mikhail Kikoin, he and Soutine arrived on July 14, 1912, and their first impulse was to go to the Opera Garnier to listen to Aida "

4.


Chaim Soutine. Monastery of the Capuchin Order in Céret. 1920. Leopold, private collection, sponsored by the Infinitart Foundation, Vienna / The Capuchin Convent at Céret Chaim Soutine circa 1920. via . Framed at Christie's exhibition

Soutine settles in the artists' colony "Beehive". His neighbors became Marc Chagall, who did not like his fellow countryman, as well as Hana Orlova and Jacques Lipchitz, who considered it their duty to help and support the artist.

5.


Chaim Soutine. Plane trees in Sere. 1920. Leopold, private collection, sponsored by the Infinitart Foundation, Vienna / Chaïm Soutine (1893-1943). Les platanes à Céret. Oil on canvas. 53.5 x 72.5 cm. Painted circa 1920. Sotheby's. Estimate 600,000 = 800,000 GBP. Lot Sold. 941,000 GBP (Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium).

Enters the workshop of Fernand Cormon at the School of Fine Arts.

6.

Portrait of Soutine by Amedeo Modigliani. 1917 / Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920). Chaim Soutine. 1917. Oil on canvas. 91.7 × 59.7 cm. Chester Dale Collection. Accession number 1963.10.47. The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. , via . Original (2577 x 4000). This work is not at the exhibition

Sculptor Jacques Lipchitz introduces Soutine to Amedeo Modigliani, they become close friends.

7.

Portrait of Soutine by Amedeo Modigliani on the door. 1917. Private collection. The portrait can be seen on the door behind Leopold Zborowski in the photo below / Amadeo Modigliani (1884-1920) Portrait de Chaïm Soutine. 1917. Huile sur panneau. H. 79 L. 54. Collection Marlene et Spencer Hays. Droits réservés. . This work is not at the exhibition

Marevna:

“Thanks to his deep knowledge of Italian art, he [Modigliani] was an excellent guide to the Louvre and introduced Soutine to the Italian primitivists, the quattrocento artists, to Giotto, Botticelli and Tintoretto, all the masterpieces he himself admired. He introduced Soutine to the circle of brilliant young painters Pablo Picasso and Diego Rivera, poets Jean Cocteau, Guillaume Apollinaire and Max Jacob."

8.

Leopold Zborowski against the background of the door on which is painted a portrait of Soutine by Modigliani. Photographer Amedeo Modigliani (if exhibition co-curator Claire Bernardi understands me correctly) / Leopold Zborowski, dealer of Amedeo Modigliani. Image from the apartment placed in Rue Joseph Bara nº3 in Paris, in front of the door with Soutine painted by Modigliani. Circa 1918 (lower part is lost, upper in Private collection). via. There are no photographs at the exhibition

1916-1919

Modigliani introduces Soutine to the Marchands Georges Cheron and Leopold Zborowski. Zborowski yields to Modigliani's persuasion and becomes Soutine's official agent.

9.


Around 1920-1921. Big blue tree. Orangerie Museum / Chaïm Soutine. Le Gros Arbre bleu. Vers 1920-1921. Huile sur toile. 83 x 80. RF 1963-85. RMN-Grand Palais (musée de l'Orangerie) / Thierry Le Mage.

The artist makes short trips to the south of France to Vence and Cagnes-sur-Mer. With the support of Zborovsky, he leaves for Seret and spends almost three years there in hard work, only occasionally traveling to Paris.

Creation of the “Confectioner” series.

10.

Around 1922-1923. Peizvzh. Orangerie Museum / Chaïm Soutine. Paysage. Vers 1922-1923. Huile sur toile. 92 x 65. RF 1963-84. RMN-Grand Palais (musée de l'Orangerie) / Hervé Lewandowski.

On January 24, Soutine's closest friend Amedeo Modigliani dies.

11.

1923-1924. Portrait of sculptor Oscar Meshchaninov. Center Pompidou / Chaïm Soutine (1894-1943). Portrait du sculpteur Oscar Miestchaninoff. 1923-1924. Huile sur toile. 83 x 65 cm. Numéro d'inventaire: AM 1972-30. Le Center Pompidou.

On June 9, Leon Zamaron, police commissioner and one of the first collectors of works by Utrillo, Modigliani, Soutine and other Montparnasse artists, exhibits his collection in Drouot.

This auction marks the first public sale of the artist's paintings.

12.

Chaim Soutine. Big hat. 1923-1924. Canvas, oil. Private collection.

A turning point in Soutine's life.

13.

Around 1923-1924. Woman in red. Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris / Chaïm Soutine. La femme en rouge. Vers 1923-1924. Huile sur toile. 92 x 65 cm. Inv. : AMVP 1135. Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.

Gallerist and collector Paul Guillaume, a consultant to Albert Barnes, a successful American pharmacist who became rich from one of the products he patented, shows the collector Soutine's works.

14.

1924. Chaim Soutine. Street in Cagnes. Canvas, oil. 55.5 × 46.4 cm. Museum of Avant-Garde Art, Moscow.

Barnes buys 52 works by the artist from Zborovsky.

15.

Around 1923-1924. Turkey and tomatoes. Orangerie Museum / Chaïm Soutine. Dindon et tomates. Vers 1923-1924. Huile sur toile. 81 x 49. RF 1963-89. RMN-Grand Palais (musée de l'Orangerie) / Franck Raux.

In January - February, Paul Guillaume organizes an exhibition of paintings acquired by Barnes in Paris, which also includes paintings by Soutine.

16.


Around 1923-1924. Still life with pheasant. Orangerie Museum / Chaïm Soutine. Nature morte au faisan. Vers 1924. Huile sur toile. 64.5 x 92. RF 1963-83. RMN-Grand Palais (musée de l'Orangerie) / Hervé Lewandowski.

The magazine “Les Arts à Paris” publishes the first article about the painter.

17.

Circa 1924. Woman in a blue dress. Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris / Chaïm Soutine. Femme à la robe bleue. Vers 1924. Huile sur toile. 81 x 60 cm. S.B.DR.: Soutine. Legs du Docteur Maurice Girardin en 1953. Inv. : AMVP 1137. MAM Ville de Paris.

In April, Albert Barnes presents his work at the exhibition "Modern European Sculpture and Painting" at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

18.

Around 1924-1925. Best man. Canvas, oil. Collection of Jean Walter and Paul Guillaume. Orangerie Museum, Paris / Chaïm Soutine. Garçon d'honneur. Vers 1924-1925. Huile sur toile. 100 x 81. RF 1960-48. RMN-Grand Palais (musée de l'Orangerie) / Hervé Lewandowski.

Thanks to Barnes, Soutine gained universal recognition and material well-being. He moves to a spacious studio and rents a comfortable apartment separately. Makes his first trip to Amsterdam and visits the Rijksmuseum, where he discovers “The Jewish Bride” (now “Isaac and Rebecca”) by Rembrandt. This painting not only made a huge impression on the artist, but became a standard for him.

““The Jewish Bride” is probably the best painting in existence, with detailed clothes and such beautiful hands,” the antiquarian and collector Rene Jempelle quotes the painter in his famous diary. Soutine, who resisted copying all his life, infuriating and despairing his teachers, this time tries unsuccessfully to reproduce the painting of the Dutch master.

19.

1925. Servant (full length). Center Pompidou / Chaïm Soutine (1894-1943). Le grand enfant de choeur. 1925. Huile sur toile. 100 x 55.9 cm. Numéro d'inventaire: AM 1995-207. Le Center Pompidou.

In June, at the Henri Bing Gallery, on the most prestigious artistic street of Paris at that time, Boesi, where the Paul Rosenberg Gallery (presenting works by Matisse, Braque, Léger, Picasso), the studio of Pablo Picasso himself, one of the most prestigious antique galleries of the Wildensteins and one of the best concert halls of Gaveau, the first monographic exhibition of Soutine opens. A catalog for it was not published, but Soutine biographer Michel LeBrun-Franzarolli believes that about 20 works were presented, including one version of “Calf Carcass” and “Still Life with a Stingray.”
Soutine lives in the town of Blanc, in a house specially rented for him by Zborovsky, and paints a series of famous still lifes with carcasses of turkeys, hares, ducks, roosters, and pheasants.

20.

Circa 1925. Carcass and head of a calf. Orangerie Museum / Chaïm Soutine. Bœuf et tête de veau. Vers 1925 ? Huile sur toile. 92 x 73. RF 1963-86. RMN-Grand Palais (musée de l'Orangerie) / Hervé Lewandowski.

Soutine's works occupy a strong place in the collections of all the main collectors of that time: in addition to Albert Barnes and Paul Guillaume, the owners of paintings are Jonas Netter, Henri Bing, Jacques Doucet, and the Castaing couple.

The artist meets again with the couple of collectors and philanthropists Madeleine and Marcelin Castaing. Their close, long-term friendship begins. At this point, the Castaings own three paintings by Soutine. Madeleine Castaing, whose collection was well known in Paris - it already contained works by Modigliani, Rouault, Picasso, Gris, Léger, truly understands and appreciates Soutine's work immediately after the Barnes exhibition and begins a real hunt for his paintings. The husband shares his wife’s passion, and soon they purchase “Portrait of an Old Woman” for 800 francs. Zborovsky, having learned about the enthusiasm with which collectors are looking for Soutine’s works, offers them the painting “Chorus Boy”. Marchand estimated it at a colossal sum of 30 thousand francs, but Madeleine convinces Marcelin of the need to purchase this canvas.

The publishing house "Triangle" in the series "Jewish Artists" publishes the first monograph on Soutine by the famous art historian Waldemar Georges. The artist goes to London to see Rembrandt's "Bather".

21.

Chaim Soutine. Small town square, Vence. Around 1929. Oil on canvas. 70.8x45.7. Museum of Avant-Garde Art, Moscow

1929-1932

The beginning of the Great Depression. The economic crisis undermines Zborovsky's business and leads him to ruin. He dies after a heart attack. Soon after this, Madeleine Castaing takes over all the care of the artist.

22.

Chaim Soutine. Woman entering the water. Around 1931. Oil on canvas. 114x72. Museum of Avant-Garde Art, Moscow.

Chaim Sutin (Chaim Solomonovich Soutine, fr. Chaim Soutine; January 13, Smilovichi, Minsk province of the Russian Empire - August 9, Paris, France) - French artist of the “Paris School”.

Biography

Soutine's appearance

Outwardly, Soutine was ugly: stooped, with a short neck pulled into his shoulders, with large facial features and a heavy jaw, like a wooden sculpture carved with an ax by a prehistoric master. A shock of coarse, dark hair, cut in a peasant style in a circle, hid a low forehead and large protruding ears. Expressive, deep-set dark eyes under swollen, reddened eyelids looked from under their brows. He had a thick nose with a narrow bridge and full lips; he smacked his lips while talking, and white bubbles appeared in the corners of his large mouth. A wonderful, sincere, inviting smile revealed darkened, yellow-stained, diseased teeth, and I just wanted to reproach him: “Soutine, you didn’t brush your teeth!” But what struck him most were his small, graceful and weak hands, like those of a child. It seemed incredible that these hands could paint such powerful canvases .

• 13.01.1893 - Chaim Soutine was born in Smilovichi, Minsk province, into a poor Jewish family, and was the tenth of eleven children. The father of the future artist worked as a tailor (according to other sources, as a synagogue servant). From early childhood, Chaim showed a love for drawing and painting.
• 1907 - in order to free himself from the influence of the family (the parents did not share their son’s point of view regarding the future career of an artist) and not to change his calling, Chaim runs away from home to Minsk. There he attends the drawing school of Ya. M. Kruger.
• 1909 - Soutine and his friend Mikhail Kikoin travel to Vilna, where they enroll in the School of Fine Arts. Future artists dream of seeing Paris.
• June 1913- Soutine arrives in Paris, where he enrolls in Cormon's studio at the Academy of Fine Arts. However, Soutine very quickly exchanges the too “academic” Academy for visits to the Louvre, which becomes his real university. Here he studies recognized works of classic painting, Greek and Egyptian sculpture, paintings by Goya, El Greco, Tintoretto, Jean Fouquet, Rembrandt, Corot and Chardin. Of his contemporaries, Soutine values ​​Courbet and Cézanne most. Soutine was interested in music and literature. His favorite authors included Montaigne, Racine, Seneca, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Balzac and Rimbaud, and his composers included Bach and Mozart. During his first years in Paris, the artist lived in poverty. Before moving to the Cité Falguières in the fifteenth arrondissement of Paris, Soutine lived and worked at La Ruche, the Hive, an international hostel for poor artists on the Left Bank of the Seine, which was created by the sculptor Alfred Boucher. Here Soutine met Léger Emil, Marc Chagall, Fernand Léger, Robert Delaunay, sculptors Constantin Brâncuşi, Ossip Zadkine, Henri Laurent, Lipchitz and Alexander Archipenko. He will meet, first of all, Modigliani, with whom he will be united by a strong but short-lived friendship (due to the latter’s premature death).
• 1918 - moves to the south of France (Vence, Caen-sur-Mer and Céret), where he stays for almost seven years. He is impressed by the beauty of the local landscapes; has been working at a breakneck pace for three years.
• 1922 - brings about two hundred written works to Paris. American collector Albert Barnes buys about fifty works from the artist. The following year, art dealer Leopold Zborowski sells many of Soutine's paintings. 10 years after arriving in Paris, he climbs out of poverty and spends everything he earns.
• 1925 - after years spent in the south of France, Soutine returns to Paris, where he moves into a spacious studio on the rue Mont Saint-Gautar, not far from Place Denfert-Rochereau. It was here that he would complete a series of bull carcasses and numerous still lifes with fish and birds.
• 1927 - Soutine’s first personal exhibition in one of the Parisian galleries; meets Marcelin and Madeleine Castaing, who, following Zborowski, will take custody of the artist
• 1929 - meets art historian Eli Faure, who will write the first monograph dedicated to his work.
• 1935 - the artist’s works are exhibited in the USA for the first time as part of a collective exhibition in Chicago.
• 1937 - an exhibition of 12 paintings by the artist at the Petit Palais State Museum in Paris as part of the collective exhibition “Masters of Independent Art 1895-1937”. Meets Gerda Groth, a German woman hiding from the Nazi regime; she will be his girlfriend for three years.
• 1939 - Soutine leaves for Yonne.
• 1941 - The artist’s parents die in the Smilovichi ghetto. Soutine himself, after unsuccessful attempts to obtain the right to enter the United States, takes refuge in Champigny.
• August 9- Chaim Soutine dies in Paris.

Creative heritage

Until 2012, there was not a single painting of him in Soutine’s homeland of Belarus. The painting “Great Meadows at Chartres” (presumably 1934) was purchased on February 8, 2012 at a Christie’s auction for $400 thousand by Belgazprombank. . In 2013, Belgazprombank acquired Soutine’s painting “Eve” at Sotheby’s auction (sale price $1,805,000), recognized as “the most expensive painting in Belarus.”

• Portraits of Soutine

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Literature

• Zingerman B.I. Parisian school. - M.: Soyuztheater, 1993. - 384 p.
• Lindberg A. Exhibition of beggars // Morning. - 2005. - December 23.
• Apchinskaya Natalia.// Tretyakov Gallery . - 2011. - No. 4 (33).

Notes

Links

• - Tretyakov Gallery magazine, #4 2011 (33)

Excerpt characterizing Soutine, Chaim Solomonovich

When a person is in motion, he always comes up with a goal for this movement. In order to walk a thousand miles, a person needs to think that there is something good beyond these thousand miles. You need an idea of ​​the promised land in order to have the strength to move.
The promised land during the French advance was Moscow; during the retreat it was the homeland. But the homeland was too far away, and for a person walking a thousand miles, he certainly needs to say to himself, forgetting about the final goal: “Today I will come forty miles to a place of rest and lodging for the night,” and on the first journey this place of rest obscures the final goal and concentrates on yourself all the desires and hopes. Those aspirations that are expressed in an individual always increase in a crowd.
For the French, who went back along the old Smolensk road, the final goal of their homeland was too distant, and the nearest goal, the one to which all desires and hopes strove, in enormous proportions intensifying in the crowd, was Smolensk. Not because people knew that there was a lot of provisions and fresh troops in Smolensk, not because they were told this (on the contrary, the highest ranks of the army and Napoleon himself knew that there was little food there), but because this alone could give them the strength to move and endure real hardships. They, both those who knew and those who did not know, equally deceiving themselves as to the promised land, strove for Smolensk.
Having reached the high road, the French ran with amazing energy and unheard-of speed towards their imaginary goal. In addition to this reason of common desire, which united the crowds of French into one whole and gave them some energy, there was another reason that bound them. The reason was their number. Their huge mass itself, as in the physical law of attraction, attracted individual atoms of people. They moved with their hundred-thousand-strong mass as an entire state.
Each of them wanted only one thing - to be captured, to get rid of all horrors and misfortunes. But, on the one hand, the strength of the common desire for the goal of Smolensk carried each one in the same direction; on the other hand, it was impossible for the corps to surrender to the company as captivity, and, despite the fact that the French took every opportunity to get rid of each other and, at the slightest decent pretext, to surrender themselves into captivity, these pretexts did not always happen. Their very number and close, fast movement deprived them of this opportunity and made it not only difficult, but impossible for the Russians to stop this movement, towards which all the energy of the mass of the French was directed. Mechanical tearing of the body could not accelerate the decomposition process beyond a certain limit.
A lump of snow cannot be melted instantly. There is a known time limit before which no amount of heat can melt the snow. On the contrary, the more heat there is, the stronger the remaining snow becomes.
None of the Russian military leaders, except Kutuzov, understood this. When the direction of flight of the French army along the Smolensk road was determined, then what Konovnitsyn foresaw on the night of October 11 began to come true. All the highest ranks of the army wanted to distinguish themselves, cut off, intercept, capture, overthrow the French, and everyone demanded an offensive.
Kutuzov alone used all his strength (these forces are very small for each commander in chief) to counteract the offensive.
He could not tell them what we are saying now: why the battle, and blocking the road, and the loss of his people, and the inhuman finishing off of the unfortunate? Why all this, when one third of this army melted away from Moscow to Vyazma without a battle? But he told them, deducing from his old wisdom something that they could understand - he told them about the golden bridge, and they laughed at him, slandered him, and tore him, and threw him, and swaggered over the killed beast.
At Vyazma, Ermolov, Miloradovich, Platov and others, being close to the French, could not resist the desire to cut off and overturn two French corps. To Kutuzov, notifying him of their intention, they sent in an envelope, instead of a report, a sheet of white paper.
And no matter how hard Kutuzov tried to hold back the troops, our troops attacked, trying to block the road. The infantry regiments are said to have charged with music and drums and killed and lost thousands of men.
But cut off - no one was cut off or knocked over. And the French army, pulled together tighter from danger, continued, gradually melting, its same disastrous path to Smolensk.

The Battle of Borodino, with the subsequent occupation of Moscow and the flight of the French, without new battles, is one of the most instructive phenomena in history.
All historians agree that the external activities of states and peoples, in their clashes with each other, are expressed by wars; that directly, as a result of greater or lesser military successes, the political power of states and peoples increases or decreases.
No matter how strange the historical descriptions are of how some king or emperor, having quarreled with another emperor or king, gathered an army, fought with the enemy army, won a victory, killed three, five, ten thousand people and, as a result, conquered the state and an entire people of several millions; no matter how incomprehensible it may be why the defeat of one army, one hundredth of all the forces of the people, forced the people to submit, all the facts of history (as far as we know it) confirm the justice of the fact that greater or lesser successes of the army of one people against the army of another people are the reasons or, according to at least significant signs of an increase or decrease in the strength of nations. The army was victorious, and the rights of the victorious people immediately increased to the detriment of the vanquished. The army suffered defeat, and immediately, according to the degree of defeat, the people are deprived of their rights, and when their army is completely defeated, they are completely subjugated.