CHAIM SOUTINE (1893-1943)
Despite being a painter of great influence, and working in Paris when it was the undisputed centre of the Art World, Chaim Soutine remains a painter of who defies classification. While he is often categorized as a member of the Ecole de Paris, in truth Soutine never belonged to an artistic group and his work shows little influence of the great movements in art that were going on around him such as Cubism and Surrealism.
After arriving Paris in 1912 at the age of 19, Soutine endured a decade living in a state of abject poverty and squalor. He was awkward and introverted, drank too much, had poor personal hygiene (reportedly harboring a nest of bedbugs in his ear for a while) and found making friends difficult. However he made a few allies with other expatriate artists, most notably Modigliani with whom he shared a small garret for a while, and who painted 4 portraits of him. Soutine’s early work is characterized by an awkward, heavily-handled painting style and a predominance of dark tones as can be seen in pictures such as Portrait of a Nurse (1916) and Still-Life with Lemons (1916). From around 1918 there is an increased fluidity of forms and painterly freedom for which Soutine is famous. Still Life with Pheasant (1918), is typical of Soutine’s work of this period both in its subject matter and execution. Soutine’s still-lives usually feature food and more often than not meat in its most animal state. The suspended pheasant carcass creates a bold vertical statement and dominates the composition. The paint is applied thickly and freely and the forms of the objects are distorted by the frenetic rhythm of the paint. The effect is a painting of great energy and intensity.
From 1919-1923 Soutine worked mainly in the South of France in and around the town of Ceret. It was during this period that he painted some of his boldest, most intense (and some say best) paintings. Landscape at Ceret (The Storm) (1920) is typical of this period. Here there is almost no sense of architectural form or proportion. The heavy black forms of angry trees seem to be constricting and suffocating the distorted buildings. It is a painting where the man’s world and nature are depicted in a state of constant battle. The sense of nervous tension that pulsates from this canvas and the emphasis on the very substance of the paint are key characteristics of Soutine’s paintings.
From the mid ‘20s onwards Soutine was commanding high prices for his work which began to have a little more sophistication and compositional order while retaining its energy and emotional charge. Soutine painted hundreds of portraits, and he often chose uniformed workers as his subjects, perhaps because he felt an affinity with the lowest in society. The Groom (1925) is a portrait of real melancholy and sadness. The open-legged posture of the boy suggests an emotional openness and vulnerability, while his bright red uniform complete with shiny brass buttons makes an awkward juxtaposition with the sad, bored expression of its wearer. Soutine was a great exponent of colour which he used for its maximum emotional impact. There is something simultaneously playful and tragic about the predominance of red in this image which the artist skillfully plays off against the green in the face and the background.
Soutine exclusively worked in oils, usually on reclaimed older canvases. In his later years preferred working on reclaimed 17th Century canvases. While his paintings often appear chaotic he is said to have had a very methodical approach to painting. He always (even when he could barely afford to eat) invested in the finest oil colours and would often discard brushes to be cleaned after a single brushstroke, such was his interest in preserving the purity of his colours. He was also very self-critical. He would frequently paint over paintings and, in his later years, searched out and bought back his early paintings, to destroy them.
Expressionism was described in 1922 as “a cry of distress, like a stream of lava forcing itself forward by the soul’s misery, and a ravenous hunger after life”. While Soutine never associated himself with the Expressionist groups of Austria or Germany, his thick impasto technique, the emotional intensity and the melancholic mood of his paintings do justify his label as an Expressionist painter. However, Soutine is probably best understood as a Realist. He had little appreciation for modern painting, but greatly admired the 19th Century Realist Painter, Gustav Courbet and most of all Rembrandt, whose paintings he frequently went to see in the Louvre and Amsterdam. He would only ever paint things that were in front of him and there are stories of his neighbours complaining of a foul stench coming from his studio as he painted rotting meat. When painting hanging carcasses, he reportedly through buckets of fresh blood over them so that they would retain their intense colours. There is nothing designed or contrived about Soutine’s paintings. He is at all times searching for a truthful description of his subjects based on his visual and emotional connection with what is in front of him. It is a deeply personal truth, and one that surpasses mere external observation, but a truth nonetheless.