Chaim Soutine (1893–1943)

Chaim Soutine was born to an impoverished Jewish family in Smilovitz, near Minsk, Russian Empire (present-day Smilavičy, Belarus). His parents Sarah and Zalman (or Salomon) Sutin, a tailor, had 11 children. At age 16, Chaim went to Vilnius, Lithuania, where a friend helped him attend art school. In 1913, he emigrated to Paris, where he met Marc Chagall, Amedeo Modigliani, and Jacques Lipchitz, among many others, and studied at the École des Beaux-Arts. Many of the artists lived in the Montparnasse district of the city. Modigliani painted Soutine's portrait several times and introduced him to art dealer Leopold Zborowski, whose support enabled Soutine to spend the years just after World War I painting landscapes in Céret, in the foothills of the Pyrenees. From 1930 to 1935, interior designer Madeleine Castaing, a patron of the arts, and her husband Marcellin hosted him each summer at their mansion in Lèves, so that Soutine could prepare for his first exhibition in Chicago in 1935. They also became the most important private collectors of Soutine's works. He seldom showed his paintings, but did take part in the important exhibition called The Origins and Development of International Independent Art at the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume in Paris in 1937. There he was finally acknowledged as an important painter. After Nazi Germany invaded France in 1940 in World War II, Soutine had to flee Paris and go into hiding to avoid arrest. He moved from place to place and was sometimes forced to seek shelter in forests, sleeping outdoors. In 1943, suffering from a bleeding stomach ulcer, Soutine left a safe hiding place for emergency surgery, which failed to save his life. He was buried anonymously in the Montparnasse cemetery by his companion Marie-Berthe Aurenche, also a painter. In 1963, Soutine's friend Henri Sérouya discovered his grave and arranged a plaque to be installed with his name and dates. Today, Soutine's works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others.