Chaim Soutine, Jonas Netter Collection, Palazzo Cipollla Museum Rome, Italy. Excellent exhibition.

 

 

I went to Italy for my Easter break. Unfortunately I got a stomach virus so I wasn't feeling great, maybe that's why I had a break from blogging as I was feeling weak, but I was still able to go to exhibitions and being in Rome there were plenty of interesting exhibitions to see. My mum suggested for me to go and view the one on Modigliani & Chaim Soutine at Palazzo Cipolla near the Italian Parliament in the centre of Rome on Via del Corso which was easy to get to. She told me the story of Chaim Soutine, who walked through Poland to get to Paris and arrived dirty covered in parasites. I can't even imagine walking that far, and she also told meet that he kept a carcass of meat in his studio to paint, and he was from Russia and he was Jewish, so his background intrigued me and I have never seen his work before - one more excuse to go and see the exhibition.

 



The Mad Woman

 

I mean the exhibition itself was focused on Modigliani, curated by Marc Restellini and titled 'Modigliani, Soutine and cursed artists from the Netter collection', even if it had very few of his works and there were many other artists working in Paris in the same period and on show. Modigliani settled in Paris Montparnasse in 1906; as Marc Restellinicsates states of that creative period: 'These  tormented spirits express themselves in a painting that feeds on despair. Ultimately, their art is not Polish, Bulgarian, Russian, Italian or French, but absolutely original; simply, it is in Paris that everyone has found the means of expression that best translated vision, their sensuality and dreams to each of them. '

Woman in Green

 In this blog today I will be focusing on the eccentric Chaim Soutine (1893-1943) as he was one of the most important artist of the twentieth century. In the exhibition there are 20 of his works (landscapes, portraits of ordinary people, still lives of carcasses & dead animals).

 

Hanging Hare

The paintings are part of the Jonas Netter collection; he was an Alsatian Jew and one of the most influential collectors of the twentieth century; without him Soutine and Modigliani would never have been known to the public which still shows how important it is for an artist to be discovered by a reputable art dealer even today.

Soutine studied arts in Vilnius School of Drawings and was helped by a Jewish family till he moved to Paris around 1913-1915. At first he studied and attended Fernand Cormon's famous atelier ( Van Gogh studied there, and Toulouse Lautrec & Emile Bernard) but wasn't getting much attention from the teacher, unlike in the Vilnius School, so he decided to study the Masters in the Louvre directly and then what was around him. Later on he used to burn canvases he didn't like, he undressed to paint so he didn't stain the only clothes he had, he was quite introverted and a close friend of Modigliani ( Kisling noted that they “were inseparable spiritual brothers''); he also met Chagall but was never interested in making paintings remembering his homeland like Chagall. This was due to the strict background he came from, Russia now Belarus, born near Minsk in a town called Smilavicy, his large, poor family was Hasidic orthodox Jewish, his father had a bad temper and used to beat Chaim so he felt unsafe at home and spent a lot of time in nature. His art wasn't really the sort of work someone in his family would have supported in persuing because of their orthodox background and  making art in the Livtak cultural tradition was a violation of the Talmud and the second commandment. He showed a portrait to a Rabbi and he got beaten for it. He also experienced persecutions due to his Jewish background by the Russian Government at the time but he was able to channel this angst into his paintings with passion and devotion ( which was much admired by Modigliani) and inspired other Jewish artists later on.

Still Life with Herrings

In the exhibition I viewed the focus on Chaim Soutine is on food. There are natural still lives but not done as before to beautify the pieces (like for example in the work of Dutch Masters where they glorify the food and show how plenty there is). Soutine's attention was instead on the carcasses of animals used as food which can be traced back possibly to his Orthodox Jewish upbringing - the combination of food and ritual - but he goes deeper looking for the ordinary, in a way the essence of the object to transform it into something else, to give the viewer a metaphysical experience he turns the meat into an abstract (photo below).

 

Meat

I mean while I was looking at it I thought I was looking at pieces of vegetation; I only realised it was a carcass of meat by looking closely and because of the title; the colours are actually very vivid. Soutine said that he kept the carcass in his studio to observe the changes in colour of the blood ( the neighbours weren't happy with the smell of rotten meat and complained about it) or to just show not what is there, but what ordinary people ate, to show the life of ordinary people. In another painting on show in the exhibition, for example, there weren't the usual fruits, or luxury items on a well laden table but he painted onions on a cheap wooden table, this made me think of Van Gogh.

I definitely saw an influence there and also of Rembrandt but Soutine makes it his own taking us into a more personal unique space; by placing always one object of cheap onions he is showing the scarcity of food he and others experienced at the time. Sometimes the paintings are done with bright colours, sometimes not, but always using undulating heavy brushstrokes, which give a sense of instability ( as you can see in photos below), a personal touch to the painting that shows that instability is really the reality one lives and is the main focus of the paintings. The instability also gives movement to the painting. It made me think of a painting of a travelling artist who moves from place to place especially the one titled: Up the Hill, below, on an artist exploring his surroundings and seeing instability in them..

Road up the Hill

 But they are not all the same, there is a progression in his work with all an influence from the trips he took to the south of France (1918-1922) which input his work with brighter colours.

 

L'Escalier-Rouge-a' Cagnes

LHomme-Au-Chaeau
 

Showing the viewer hunger, poverty, human suffering at first in a mild way then in later years in a  more forceful, grotesque way which reminds me of  the British painter Bacon, especially the portrait

above.

Some art critics saw links to primitivism and realism but I would say he really doesn't ascribe specifically to any movement, maybe more to abstract expressionism, some label him under expressionism which was seen as being more primitive then the previous theoretical approach of oil painting, expressionism is a wide term that went against an academic approach based on early 20th century Germany, concerned with genuine feelings, nature, spirituality, it was seen as against quick industrialization of Germany; but Soutine didn't go to Berlin he went to Paris maybe attracted by is cultural history appeal and possibly aware of other artists going there from a Jewish background.

 

Soutine's (pic. above) anxieties, nightmarish paintings might be due also to the historical period he was living in which is the consequence of the collapse of different empires (Hapsburg Empire 1273-1918, the Ottoman Empire 1299-1923 and most important the Russian Empire 1721-1917) and his final years under the Nazi regime. In fact in 1937 he had an acclaimed exhibition at the Independent Art show in Paris; sadly the Nazis were taking over France so Soutine had to escape Paris to hide from the Gestapo; he was sleeping in forests, farms, and was helped by Mademoiselle Garde. She was first captured and sent to a camp in the Pyrenees - they never saw each other again. Soutine's life took a turn for the worst with the strain of constantly hiding from the Nazis in outdoor poor conditions, lack of food, and a strong mouth ulcer bothering him, and he wasn't able to go back to Paris to seek help. He died in 1943 and was buried in Montparnasse and  his funeral was attended by Picasso, Max Jocob and Cocteau.

 For a long time, Soutine spoke a mixture of French, Yiddish, and Russian that the French found difficult to understand. I can totally relate to this as a  lot of people expect you to speak languages with no accents but what happenes if you are abroad for a while is that the languages tend to get mixed; he seemed to have the same problem I have. One thing that made me laugh is that one of the pamphlets given out at the exhibition described Soutine as saying; Don't talk to me about that Italian ( Modigliani his spiritual friend..) who nearly made me into an alcoholic..