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Well, Yes, Chaim Sutin, his full name-Chaim Solomonovich Sutin, he was born either in 1893, or in 1894 in the town of Smilovichi somewhere in the West of the Russian Empire.
Well, now it is - of course-Belarus. He died in Paris on August 9, 1943. No one knows exactly, but it seems that he had a difficult childhood in a Jewish place, but before his arrival in Paris, it is generally known only from his stories about himself, which arise in the memories of one or another inhabitant of the then Bohemian Montparnasse, but this information is not reliable. But in any case, he is described by everyone as a man incredibly shy and unsociable, who never had a home, always doubted what he was doing and still worked hard. And Yes, after his death, a crowd of art critics began to deal with him and then it turned out that Soutine did not leave any memories or diaries there, but only a few completely everyday letters to his Jewish relatives, which were more stories about health and how and what he eats. And maybe it was because there was no exact information, and it was necessary to search for something and interpret it, biographers he gathered an incredible crowd and everyone dug into the contradictory testimonies of those who somehow communicated with him-friends, other artists, merchants and women who periodically lived with him.
By the way, there was one person who could tell a lot about Soutine – albert Barnes. He actually "discovered" it in the mid-twenties, and it was thanks to him that Soutine became somehow sold. In principle, this American collector (and in fact primarily a doctor and chemist) can be called a patron or even a producer of Chaim Soutine. And Barnes, by the way, wanted to write some memoirs about him, but he died in a car accident. So – only broken memories and actually, the works themselves. So about the paintings. They have about five hundred – also a funny thing: "about" because many are not signed (and not dated at all, none), and the authenticity was established after examination. Well, Yes, Soutine himself said very little about his pictorial concepts, but he is always placed somewhere near Chagall or Modigliani. At the same time, everyone recognizes that he stayed away from any movement and developed his technique and his vision of the world. Readily referring to almost all the great masters, that's right from Rembrandt and limiting himself to three canonical genres of figurative painting-portraits, landscapes and still lifes-he created something that is not classified at all, with a lively, contrasting, and sometimes even rigid palette, which sometimes for some reason reminds many of the palette of Edvard Munch. And on the line-Yes, on the line, too, everyone often puts it somewhere close to Munch or Emil Nolde. He, too, has these convulsive forms and agonizing lines to create such an unsettling and dramatic atmosphere. In the fifties, abstract expressionists from the new York school amicably recognize Soutine as a forerunner, prophet, and pioneer, although, of course, he was not an expressionist.
But in these colors and disturbing lines of his (as they still like to say - "in this work with a confusing aesthetic"), some commentators would like to see him, whose life allowed to revive the myth of the cursed artist. But – I don't know, for me, so there's more internal tossing about material problems, some form of alcoholic or fictional insanity and very difficult social integration.
That's it.
I don't know what else to tell you about him.
So enjoy it. Chaim Soutine. "Portrait of a mad woman." One thousand nine hundred nineteen
