Chaim Soutine: The Complete Story
A whole side of beef, hanging and rotting, painted in furious reds so alive they seem to pulse. Chaim Soutine kept a real carcass in his studio until neighbours complained of the smell, and the resulting paintings are among the most intense in modern art.
He was a painter of the School of Paris, born in what is now Belarus, famous for thickly painted, emotional works of portraits, landscapes and animal carcasses.
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Paint like raw flesh
Soutine attacked the canvas, loading on paint in thick, twisting strokes so that his surfaces churn with energy.
This furious impasto links him closely to Expressionism, though he always worked from the thing in front of him, never from imagination alone.
The carcass paintings
His most famous works show sides of beef and plucked fowl, inspired by Rembrandt, painted with such intensity that the dead flesh seems to glow.
He had a butcher deliver a carcass to his studio and poured blood over it to keep the colour fresh, chasing the exact red he wanted even as it decayed.
The tormented sitters
Soutine also painted unforgettable portraits of cooks, bellboys, choirboys and pastry chefs in their uniforms, their faces and bodies twisted by his restless brush.
These working people, painted with raw sympathy, are some of the most alive portraits of the century.
From poverty to fame and hiding
Born into a poor Jewish family in the Russian empire, Soutine arrived in Paris with nothing and lived in misery until an American collector bought dozens of his paintings at once and changed his life.
During the Nazi occupation of France he was hunted as a Jew and forced to hide in the countryside, and he died in 1943 after a desperate journey for emergency surgery.
Things people ask about Chaim Soutine
What is he known for?
Thickly painted, emotional works, especially his beef carcass paintings.
Why a real carcass?
He kept one in his studio to paint its colour from life.
Where was he from?
A village in what is now Belarus, then the Russian empire.
When did he die?
In 1943, while hiding from the Nazis.
Why his fury still grips
Soutine painted as if his life depended on it, because for much of it that was nearly true, and the result is paint that feels physically alive.
His churning carcasses and twisted sitters fed directly into later painters like Francis Bacon, proof that raw feeling, handled by a master, never loses its force.
A single sale to the American collector Albert Barnes, who bought a large group of his canvases in one visit, lifted him overnight from hunger to fame, one of the most dramatic reversals in any artist life.
He destroyed many of his own paintings in fits of dissatisfaction, so the works that survive are doubly precious, rescued from a hand that was its own harshest critic.
His influence on later painting was enormous, and the postwar generation that wanted to push paint to the edge of violence looked back to him as a forerunner.
Today his canvases hang in the world greatest museums and command high prices at auction, a long way from the starving young immigrant who once could not afford to eat in the city he made his own.
Only a few hundred of his paintings survive, partly because he destroyed so many himself, which makes each one that remains a hard won record of a furious, short lived talent.