On the Cover

Cover image:Chaim Soutine (1893-1943). Landscape in

Cagnes (La Gaude, France) ca. 1923.

� 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP,

Paris

Location: Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio

Photo credit: Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY

Soutine was one of eleven children of a poor Jewish

tailor living in a small village near Minsk (in today’s

Belarus). In 1913, at the age of 22, he emigrated to Paris

where he met and enjoyed the fellowship of other

Jewish expat artists such as Marc Chagall and Amedeo

Modigliani. An art dealer, Paul Guillaume, introduced

Soutine to Dr. Albert Barnes, a brash American physician

and chemist who had made a large fortune with an

antiseptic preparation named Argyrol (silver nitrate)

used to treat gonorrhea and to prevent infection in the

eyes of newborns. Once rich, Barnes dedicated his life to

understanding and acquiring art. He bought large

quantities of paintings, not only from investors who in

the economic depression of the time needed cash for

their art collections, but also from artists he discovered

through his acquaintances in the art dealer’s world. The

magnificent, and controversial, Barnes Foundation in

Philadelphia attests to the discerning and critical mind of

its founder. Barnes purchased his first 60 Soutine

paintings and showed them in Paris and New York. With

these purchase Soutine ceased to be the perpetually

broken artist who would hang around cafes hoping to

get an invitation to a meal. In the mid 1900s, Soutine’s

Expresionistic style was alien to the art world of Paris.

But the showing of his paintings by Barnes and, later on,

the promotion of his work by a socially prominent and

wealthy Parisian, Mme. Castaing, gave him public

recognition. And so, Soutine went from being an

unknown painter to being hailed as a great one. In

WWII during the German occupation he hid in the

countryside. He came to Paris to undergo surgery for

a perforated and bleeding gastric ulcer and died just days

before the city was liberated by the Allies.

His work reflects a mixture of anxiety (a la Kafka) and

melancholia. His Expressionist style is more violent than

that of the German expressionists of his time. Soutine

was a frenzied painter and a brooding introvert that lived

isolated in his private world. Like his contemporaries and

many of his predecessors he painted in flat, two

dimensional views. His canvasses usually have one

brilliant dominant color. His still-lifes spoke about death

and were mostly dead birds or beef carcasses (one of the

10 carcasses he painted sold 6 years ago at Christie’s in

London for $13.8 million). His landscapes, such as the

one on this cover, are characterized by bold strokes,

heavy impasto, tangled surfaces, and houses and trees

that seem to be involved in an earthquake. His paintings

anticipate the style of the Abstract Expressionists that

would follow.

R. Berguer

A7