Chaim Soutine, his quotes on painting landscape, portraits & still life art; + biography facts
Chaim Soutine (1893 – 1943), his painter quotes on portrait, still life and landscape painting, including short biography facts. Soutine was a Russian born painter who traveled as young artist to Paris and lived and worked among other famous painter artists like Zadkine, his friend Modigliani
* At the bottom biography facts & art links for Chaim Soutine. – the editor.
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Soutine: The old Mill’, painting 1922 |
Chaim Soutine, his artist quotes on painting art and life; + biography facts
- Once I saw the village butcher slice the neck of a bird and drain the blood out of it. I wanted to cry out, but his joyful expression caught the sound in my throat… …This cry, I always feel it there. When, as a I drew a crude portrait of my professor, I tried to rid myself of this cry, but in vain. When I painted the beef carcass it was still this cry that I wanted to liberate. I have still not succeeded. (comment to his friend and biographer, fh)
* ‘’Soutine et son temps’’, Emile Szittya, La Bibliothèque des Arts, Paris, 1955, pp. 107-108, as quoted in ‘’Chaim Soutine, Catalogue Raisonné’’ … p. 16. (famous Russian-born / painter in France of landscape, still life & portraits; biography information and life facts at the bottom)
- You don’t like my painting, you only want to help me. If you had given me one franc for my picture I would have taken it (his reaction when M. Castaing discouvered his art for the very first time and offered him in advance100 franc to buy one of his paintings, and visiting later Soutine’s studio with a broader choiche than the one he saw, circa 1917 – 1919)
* painter quote from: “Soutine”, by Monrou Wheeler, Museum of modern art, New York, 1950; p. 37
- I never touched Cubism myself, you know, although I was attracted by it one time. When I was painting at Céret and at Cagnes (1919 and since 1923, fh) I yielded to its influence in spite of myself, and the results were not entirely banal. But then… …Céret itself is anything but banal. There is so much foreshortening in the landscape that, for that very reason, a picture may seem to have been painted in some specific style (1927, fh).
* artist quotes on Cubism painting: “Life with the painters of La Ruche’’, Vorobëv Marevna, Macmillan, New York, 1972, p. 156.
- It is the first time in my life that I have not been able to do anything. I am in a bad state of mind and I am demoralized, and that influences me. I have only seven canvases. I am sorry. I wanted to leave Cagnes, this landscape that I cannot endure. I even went for a few days to Cap Martin, where I thought of settling down. It displeased me. I had to rub out the canvases I started.
I am in Cagnes again, against my will, where, instead of landscapes, I shall be forced to do some miserable still lifes. You will understand in what a state of indecision I am. Can’t you suggest some place for me? Because, several times I have had the intention of returning to Paris. (1929) ).
* painter quotes on Cagnes landscape: letter to his Paris art dealer Zborowski, 1929; as quoted in “Soutine”, by Monrou Wheeler, Museum of modern art, New York, 1950; p. 61.
- to the husband of his model a railway gate-keeper; his wife had to pose a second session for the painting ‘The siesta’ during 1934: You have no right to interfere with my art. Your wife is not your property. I need her, in order to finish my picture, I must have her! I will sue you! (the woman returned by persuasion of the Castaings who supported Soutine, fh).
* painter quote on a model for his painting: “Life with the painters of La Ruche’’, Vorobëv Marevna, Macmillan, New York, 1972, p. 156.
- …My paintings are a heap of shit, but better than Modigliani, Marc Chagall, and Krémènge (a Russian companion painter, fh). Some day I will destroy my canvases (in fact Soutine destroyed more than hundreds of his paintings, and many paintings he had painted in Ceret for the first period, fh) but they are too cowardly to do it.
* quotes on his paintings, compared with the art of his friend Modigliani: ‘’Soutine et son temps’’, Emile Szittya, La Bibliothèque des Arts, Paris, 1955, pp. 107-108, as quoted in ‘’Chaim Soutine, Catalogue Raisonné’’; p. 38, 46-47.
- Dear Mrs. Castaing, please come over after midday at 2 o’clock with a white dress without sleeves in order to pose. Because today I will not go to Mrs. Saxe. I am disgusted to do nothing at all. ).
* painter quote: “Silvana editoriale d’arte’’, Milano. (famous Russian-born / painter in France of landscape, still life and portriats, biography information and life facts at the bottom)
not sourced art quotes on painting by Chaim Soutine
- A tree is like a cathedral, high in the sky and solidly grounded (short statement on painting the large tree in the village Vence, he painted several times, fh)
- If she is challenged and worn out you get the true spirit of her. (comment on the model of his painting ‘Reading woman’, fh)
- The woman is beautiful when she (after a lot of shouting, fh) forgets you are looking, so I get her as she really is, alone there in the water. (Soutine’s comment on the model of his painting: ‘Bathing Woman’, he painted after Rembrandt, 1927, fh)
- I cannot find the door and get through it. (on the moment when the painting did not progressed, fh)
biography facts of the Russian-born artist Chaim Soutine
Soutine was born in 1894 in Smilovitchi, near Minsk, Western Russia. By the time he was sixteen he had begun to become a painter and asked the rabbi to pose for his portrait. With another boy if his village, Michel Kikoine, he set out for Minsk to study painting and later the two aspirants went on to the School of Fine arts in Vilna. A friendly doctor in Vilna helped Soutine in 1913 to make the great journey to Paris where he enrolled in common’s class at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, butt soon already he settled on the Left bank in Paris as an independent artist. Later he moved to the famous old building La Ruche where he met Chagall, Zadkine, Kisling and many other artists like the poet Cendrars who became an important friend. Also the sculptor Lipchitz who introduced him to Modigliani, who brought Soutine’s work to the attention of the courageous art dealer Leopold Zborowski.
In the art school of Vilna and at the Beaux-Arts (circa 1913) under Cormon Soutine was taught a kind of 19th century classical realism painting, dark and painstaking. In his early artists years he talked a lot of Tintoretto and El Greco; a few years later Rembrandt became very important to him, and het travelled there day to Amsterdam and back just to see the Rembrandt paintings who shocked and confused him deeply, so he returned to Paris at once.
The classical art-education he got – this influence was still visible in the compositions of the still lifes he painted circa 1916, with a discernible influence of Matisse’s Fauvism. He also knew Modigliani (10 years older and already a local celebrity in Paris art scene). In 1917 Soutine painted his first dramatic still lifes with fishes, as the start of his characteristic wild paining art. These were painted in the famous old factory La Ruche where he met also Zadkine the sculptor and Chagall the Russian painter.
It was his Paris art dealer Zborowski who proposed Soutine to have a long stay in the small town Ceret in the French Pyrenees. In the three years 1919 – 1922 Soutine had there a first period he spent in Ceret; then the most prolific paintings of his whole life he created: over 200 canvasses (many of them he destroyed later, fh) , like ‘Village square’ ‘The Haunted house’ perhaps partly because of his confusion by the death of his friend Modigliani. The painted canvases of this period in Ceret are extremely tumultuous and obscure, and very similar to later abstract-expressionism by Pollock and De Kooning in the 1940’s. Willem de Kooning admired Soutine strongly and said one time: Soutine distorted the pictures but not the people.
The wildness of Soutine’s paintings was shocking for contemporary artists and critics of his time. In 1928 the art critic Waldemar George wrote: Soutine’s canvas ‘bends and shakes his figures as though they had St. Vitus dance. Harmonious still lifes, flowers and fruits, it reduces to rags and tatters. Houses oscillate on their foundations and move ardently hither and thither in the landscape, turning it topsy-turvy as in series of seismic shocks.’
In the winter 0f 1922-23 an American art-lover Barnes discovered Soutine’s paintings in Paris and bought many canvases; he wrote also the first appraisal in ‘Arts a Paris’. Barnes was an American pharmaceutical manufacturer and became the first collector, interested in Soutine; he purchased between 50 and 100 paintings; this collection was shown in America frequently, so the young Abstract expressionists could see the Soutine’s paintings, as did De Kooning frequently,
Soutine left for Cagnes again and became to detest all his youthful works before 1923; the presence of these young and wild works it in so many collections was a real vexation to him all his life. He changed very often his places and the landscapes (read the quote to Zborowski in a letter in 1923, fh). In this period many of his famous portraits were painted like ‘The Farm Girl’ and Woman in Red, and the portrait of his friend the sculptor Miestchaninoff.
In 1925 Soutine was back in Paris where he had a large studio in the Rue du Mont St. Gotthard where he bought as his model a complete slaughtered carcass of a steer and painted four large paintings (also Rembrandt painted a steer: Carcas of Beef, in the Louvre, admired and visited many times by Soutine, fh), meanwhile the steer decomposed and smelled terribly.
The summers of 1930 till 1935 Soutine spent with the Castaings at their little chateau at Leves, near Chartres. They helped him to find his models, by car travelling through the county. And many beautiful portraits were painted. In 1927 he wanted to make a painting after Rembrandts ‘ Woman Bathing and was hunting for a good model with the Castaings.
Soutine seldom showed his works, but he did take part in the important exhibition ‘The Origins and Development of International Independent Art’, held at the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume in 1937 in Paris, where he was at last hailed as a great painter in France.
A few years later France was invaded by German troops. As a Jew, Soutine had to escape from the French capital and hide in order to avoid arrest by the Gestapo. He moved from one place to another and was sometimes forced to seek shelter in forests, sleeping outdoors. Suffering from a stomach ulcer and bleeding badly, he left a safe hiding place for Paris in order to undergo emergency surgery, which failed to save his life. On August 9, 1943, Chaim Soutine died of a perforated ulcer.
Chaim Soutine, art links for biography facts & painting images of the Jewish painter, working in France
* biography information on the painting art of the famous painter Chaim Soutine, on Wikipedia
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