Grove Koger

The name Chaïm Soutine probably doesn’t ring any bells with you, but perhaps I can change that.

Born Chaim-Itzke Solomonovich Sutin in 1893 in what today is the Eastern European nation of Belarus, Soutine studied art in Lithuania before moving to Paris. The French capital was then the center of the artistic world, and it was there that the young man began an immersion in a world of culture that he had only dreamed of. In the process, he made himself into an artist, one whose sinuous, thickly painted, sensuously contorted style is unmistakable once you’re seen it.

Among the fellow artists Soutine befriended in Paris were Amadeo Modigliani, who painted Soutine’s portrait, and who had his own painted in turn. Soutine also gained the patronage of art dealer Léopold Zborowski.

When he was financially able to, Soutine decamped to southwestern France, settling from 1919 to 1922 in the commune (town) of Céret. Lying about 25 miles from the Mediterranean coast, Céret (as the site About-France.com puts it) is the “jewel of French Catalonia,” and had previously attracted such artists as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque.  

Although he painted striking portraits and equally striking carcasses (!) of cattle, Soutine also chose Céret itself as a subject, and it’s the resulting works that I can identify with most easily. Studying them, I have a sense that the artist understood the nature of the very roots and bark and foliage of the town’s trees and the hard, lichen-covered stones of its houses. He understood that his subjects, even the supposedly inanimate ones, had souls.

Several books have been devoted to Soutine’s sojourn in the Catalan town, including the 519-page exhibition catalog Soutine: Céret 1919-1922, by Esti Dunow with Josephine Matamoros (Céret: Musee d’Art Moderne de Céret, 2000). I try not to buy any more books these days, but I’m tempted …

Artists such as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque had visited Céret for a time in 1911, but their paintings of the town aren’t quite as memorable as Soutine’s. But I think their work and the town itself might deserve a closer look down the line.

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