HUMLEBÆK.- The painter Chaïm Soutine (1893–1943), has masterfully captured the time around and between the two world wars. From 9 February, his work is presented in a major exhibition at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. Soutine is one of the leading and most distinctive expressionists of the School of Paris. It seems clear that the exhibition in Humlebæk – the first of its kind in Northern Europe – will bring him to a newer, broader public.

The coming presentation of Chaïm Soutine’s work at Louisiana has an aura of discovery about it. In spite of figuring as a key artist of classical modernism and being represented in the collections of many prominent art museums, Soutine has not previously been the object of wide-ranging attention in Scandinavia.

Unparalleled Colour Explosions: Chaïm Soutine is an outstanding artist with an extraordinary life story. After growing up in abject poverty in a Jewish Orthodox family in a small town near Minsk in what is today Belarus, he travelled to Paris, France in 1913. The art metropolis became his second home. Soutine did not join any group of artists, but remained an outsider throughout his life. He painted figuratively, expressively and against the current.

Whilst many of his contemporaries were preoccupied with the abstract movements of the avant-garde, Soutine followed his own path. He cultivated his distinctive, intensely vibrant style and expressive idiom, characterised by distorted subjects, blazing colours and a restless, powerful line that makes his paintings unparalleled.

Soutine painted figures – bellboys, maids, cooks and choirboys were his favourite models – still lifes with slaughtered animals and swaying landscapes. He drew inspiration from the old masters he studied at the Louvre. His paintings explode with colour, at once fierce and beautiful - capturing the time around and between the two world wars, characterised by war, social problems and conflicting religious and political views. The almost raw approach to the figures and motifs testifies to a lived life and exudes presence, and Soutine's works remain relevant because their honesty reflects the existential concerns of our time, fuelled not least by a modern world that is in many ways rootless.

The artistically innovative potency of Soutine’s work had an influence deep into the twentieth century and was a major source of inspiration for artists such as Francis Bacon, Willem de Kooning and Georg Baselitz, all of whom are represented in Louisiana’s collection. Soutine’s name often comes up when contemporary artists are asked to point out their artistic exemplars.

The exhibition encompasses no fewer than 64 paintings from across the artist’s career and presents a differentiated overview of all facets of his painterly production: sensitive portraits of humble folk; wondrous, wavering landscapes beaming with colour; and enigmatic still lifes of slaughtered animals. The presentation of the works is loosely chronological, with a particular focus on the period between World War I and the Great Depression of 1929, when Soutine's artistic productivity was at its peak and the work is organised around distinctive thematic series.

The generous loans for the exhibition come from Musée de l’Orangerie (Paris), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Kunstmuseum Basel, The Israel Museum (Jerusalem), MoMA (New York), Tate (London) and National Gallery of Art (Washington), among others.

The exhibition is a collaboration between Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, and Kunstmuseum Bern.

The exhibition is supported by the Aage & Johanne Louis-Hansen Foundation

Chaïm Soutine

Chaïm Soutine grew up in extreme poverty in a Jewish Orthodox family in what is now Belarus. He knew at an early age that he wanted to be an artist and, despite his parents’ misgivings, was allowed to take drawing classes in Minsk.

It was here as a youth that he painted a portrait of a man which ran contrary to the orthodox canon, with the result that Soutine was attacked and beaten by the man’s sons. His parents managed to claim compensation for the assault, and with this money, Soutine was able to travel to Vilnius and enrol in the city’s art school.

In 1913, he travelled to Paris, then the epicentre of the European avant-garde and a meeting point for many voluntarily and involuntarily exiled artists – especially those from Eastern Europe. Although the metropolis was his second home, he remained an outsider throughout his life.

Many of his early years in Paris were marked by hunger and deprivation. It was not until 1922–1923, when the American collector Albert C. Barnes acquired no less than 52 of his works, that Soutine achieved a sudden and unexpected form of recognition. This brought about an improvement in Soutine’s financial standing but did little to change his restless and reserved nature – he moved between lodgings constantly, formed few close relationships, spoke poor French, and was described as eccentric.

In general, we know very little about him as a person. He left behind only a few drawings and sketches and no notes; he did not keep a diary, and wrote only a handful of cards and letters. Being both stateless and Jewish, when the Germans invaded and occupied Paris in 1940 his life became precarious in the extreme. In his final years, Soutine lived more or less in hiding or on the run. When he finally ventured back to Paris in 1943 to undergo surgery for a bleeding ulcer, it was too late.

Lousiana Museum of Modern Art
Chaïm Soutine:Against the Current
9 February – 14 July 2024
Curator: Kirsten Degel. Exhibition design: Maya Lahmy