Creator Bio
Chaim Soutine
1893–1943
The expressionist painter Chaim Soutine was born in Smilovits (now Smilavičy, Belarus), into an impoverished and traditional religious family. He fled his family and hometown in 1909 and studied painting, first in Minsk and later in Vilna. In 1913, he left for Paris, where he lived the remainder of his life, except for the years 1940 to 1943, which he spent in the French countryside, hiding from the Nazis. Although his work was never explicitly Jewish in terms of its subject matter, critics always viewed him as a representative Jewish artist, in part because of the emotional intensity of his style and in part because he associated with other East European Jewish artists who settled in Paris.
Entries in the Posen Library by This Creator
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Portrait of Moïse Kisling
Soutine was a prominent member of the School of Paris (École de Paris), a group of young artists, many of whom were Eastern and Central European Jews. He has been described as a “liminal” figure. He…
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Self-Portrait
Chaim Soutine’s self-portrait is both an homage to art history and a critique of it. There was a long tradition of artists painting themselves facing an easel, holding a palette and paint brushes. But…