Like Gustave Courbet, Chaim Soutine (1893/94-1943) was a complex man who was not universally loved during his lifetime, although in Soutine’s case anti-Semitism seems to have played a role in attacks on his work and personality. Both men experienced enormous success during their lives, however.

Born near Minsk in 1893 or ’94, Soutine moved to Paris in 1913 and immediately found a studio in the famous Ruche (Beehive), also occupied by many artists whose names would live on, among them Chagall and Zadkine, and studied with Fernand Cormon, who had once been Van Gogh’s teacher. A rare Expressionist working in France, Soutine differed from his German and Austrian counterparts in that he had no political agenda in his work, which was also untouched by religious and historical subjects. A great friend of Modigliani, he was an admirer of Rembrandt, Courbet, Corot and Cézanne, but the influence of Van Gogh can also be seen in his work. And his own influence on the tormented subjects of Francis Bacon’s work can’t be ignored.

As with Courbet, however, what counts is not the man, but the œuvre. That said, though, it’s true that Soutine’s terribly compelling and powerful work, more than that of many other artists, raises questions about the artist’s psychological state. To see why, pay a visit to the major exhibition of his work at the  Pinacothèque de Paris: “Chaïm Soutine: Le Fou de Smilovitchi.” Even the show’s subtitle, “the madman of Smilovitchi,” refers to Soutine’s state of mind, and when you look at some of his paintings, especially those done between 1919 and ’22 in Céret, France, where he was sent into a sort of unwanted artistic exile by Léopold Zborowski, his dealer at the time, you wonder about the man’s sanity.

In “View of Céret” (1922), for example, the multicolored paint seems to have been slapped onto the canvas in a wild rage, while the hilltop château looks like it’s about to be sucked up into the turbulent sky by a tornado. Even a philosopher pictured in his library looks like he is caught in a dangerous whirlwind of books. A boy dressed in red and seated on a red chair in “Child with Toy” (1919) looks more a malevolent gnome holding a weapon or a phallic object than an innocent kid.

Soutine was no kinder to himself. In the1922-23 self-portrait “Grotesque” (a word sometimes applied to his work by others), he depicts himself as a kind of monster with huge, blubbery, sensual red lips and an enormous tuber of a nose. Since he was known for his rages and epic depressions and a tendency to slash and burn his paintings, it probably wouldn’t be much of a stretch to say he wasn’t in a happy frame of mind when he made this painting.

Carmine red was one of the artist’s favorite colors. Who can forget the shock of the first time they saw one of his paintings of seated choir boys (one dating from 1927-28 is in this show), looking like the very picture of angelic innocence wrapped in the fiery red of hell? In “Red Stairs in Cagnes” (1918), the stairway is like a river of blood rushing past innocent little white houses.

If we believe the evidence of the paintings in his show, Soutine seemed to gradually calm down and find some peace after the Amercian collector Albert Barnes (whose museum near Philadelphia is now the subject of so much controvery) discovered and fell in love with his work in 1923.

A series of portraits of women from the 1930s reveals Soutine’s tender side, although  he didn’t seem to think much of motherhood, judging by “Maternity” (1942), a stunning work whose lighting makes you think of Rembrandt, in which the handsome mother, who is looking off to the side, seems to be letting a rag-doll-like sleeping (or dead?) child slip to the floor. One of the most touching paintings in this show is “La Folle” (1919; pictured above), whose subject looks more pitiful than mad with her gnarled hands, hunched posture and big, sad eyes.

I haven’t even mentioned the wonderful still lifes of very fishy fish or the plucked chicken carcasses or the rabbit carcass with eerie blue lighting (Soutine’s paintings of animal carcasses were often modeled after those of Rembrandt and Chardin), but there are many other delights you’ll have to see for yourself in this comprehensive show, which offers extensive wall commentaries on the progress of the painter’s life (in French only).

Heidi Ellison

Pinacothèque de Paris: 28, place de la Madeleine, 75008 Paris. Métro: Madeleine. Tel.: 01 42 68 02 01.  Open daily 10:30 a.m.-6 p.m. (December 25 and January 1, 2 p.m.-6 p.m.). Admission: €9. Through March 2, 2008. www.pinacotheque.com

© 2007 Paris Update

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