Soutine, Chaim (1894-1943) - 1919-20 View of Ceret
"While artistic movements, some of them originating in Paris, made waves throughout Europe – Cubism, Futurism, Dada and Surrealism – Soutine remained relatively unimpressed by these ramifications of modernism and instead cultivated a distinctive, highly intense painting of his own, informed with an unprecedented degree of profound and palpable emotion. His pictures are freighted with the tension of collapsing perspective and hyperbolically distorted figuration, reinforced by a powerful, gestural brushstroke. The revolutionary potential inherent in this painting exerted an influence well into the 20th-century and was a seminal force in the work of artists like Francis Bacon or Willem de Kooning.
Paradoxically, Soutine is as much a visionary as he is a traditionalist: he was quite indifferent to one of the greatest achievements of modernism, the freedom of subject matter; he maintained an unwavering, lifelong devotion to the triad of still life, landscape and portrait. There is, in fact, not a single subject in Soutine’s art for which one could not find a 17th-century model. It almost seems as if art historically sanctioned genres afforded him the security that he needed in order to venture into uncharted territory as a painter."
Soutine, Chaim (1894-1943) - 1919-20 View of Ceret
"While artistic movements, some of them originating in Paris, made waves throughout Europe – Cubism, Futurism, Dada and Surrealism – Soutine remained relatively unimpressed by these ramifications of modernism and instead cultivated a distinctive, highly intense painting of his own, informed with an unprecedented degree of profound and palpable emotion. His pictures are freighted with the tension of collapsing perspective and hyperbolically distorted figuration, reinforced by a powerful, gestural brushstroke. The revolutionary potential inherent in this painting exerted an influence well into the 20th-century and was a seminal force in the work of artists like Francis Bacon or Willem de Kooning.
Paradoxically, Soutine is as much a visionary as he is a traditionalist: he was quite indifferent to one of the greatest achievements of modernism, the freedom of subject matter; he maintained an unwavering, lifelong devotion to the triad of still life, landscape and portrait. There is, in fact, not a single subject in Soutine’s art for which one could not find a 17th-century model. It almost seems as if art historically sanctioned genres afforded him the security that he needed in order to venture into uncharted territory as a painter."