Soutine, an independent artist in the School of Paris is the title of the online lecture that Centro Sefarad-Israel is presenting this afternoon at 6 p.m., given by art historian Federica Palomero. The lecture can be followed on Centro Sefarad-Israel’s YouTube channel, at this link.
Chaïm Soutine was born in 1893 in the province of Minsk (Russian Empire, now Belarus) into a very humble Orthodox Jewish family and died in Paris in 1943. His career was full of vicissitudes. After many difficulties shared with the painter Michel Kikoïne, he arrived in Paris in 1913, at the height of the then “capital of the arts”, where he became a prominent member of the École de Paris, which brought together artists from all over the world who took part in the avant-garde and the hectic Bohemian life. It was there that he struck up a close friendship with Modigliani.
Although his style was very different from Modigliani’s, he developed a highly personal work, far removed from the avant-gardes of his time: cubism, abstraction and then surrealism, among others. Faithful to the traditional themes of painting – portraiture, landscape and still life – he approached them in an intense and passionate manner. His style makes him the most representative artist of Expressionism.
