Chaim Soutine

Expressionist painter Chaim Soutine (1893-1943) brought visceral emotional intensity to the School of Paris. Born the tenth child of a poor Jewish tailor in Belarus, he emigrated to Paris in 1913 where he befriended Modigliani. Soutine's turbulent landscapes, anguished portraits, and gruesome studies of raw meat display thick impasto, agitated brushwork, and disturbing psychological content. His distorted forms and violent color anticipate Abstract Expressionism; Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning later studied his technique.

Soutine trained at the Vilnius Drawing School before attending the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris under Fernand Cormon. Living in extreme poverty at the La Ruche artists' colony, he slept in stairways and on benches. American collector Albert C. Barnes purchased 60 paintings in one meeting, transforming Soutine from destitute to successful. His Carcass of Beef series, inspired by Rembrandt, required him to keep actual carcasses in his studio. During the Nazi occupation, Soutine fled Paris as a Jew, hiding in forests until a perforated ulcer killed him in 1943. His works now hang in the Barnes Foundation, Tate, and major museums across Europe and America.