Chaim soutine

 born 1893/94?, Smilovichi, near Minsk, Russian Empire [now in Belarus]

died Aug. 9, 1943, Paris, Fr.

Russian-born French painter whose highly individualistic style, characterized by the use of thick impasto, agitated brushwork, convulsive compositional rhythms, and the presence of disturbing psychological content, is closely related to early 20th-century Expressionism.

Soutine was born the 10th child of a poor Jewish tailor in Belorussia.At age 16 he went to Vilna (now Vilnius) in Lithuania, where a friendly doctor helped him attend the school of fine arts for three years. In 1913 he emigrated to Paris, where he met Marc Chagall, Amedeo Modigliani, and Jacques Lipchitz, and attended the École des Beaux-Arts. Modigliani introduced Soutine to the art dealer Leopold Zborowski, who enabled him to spend three years (1919–22) painting at Céret in the south of France. The feverish,visionary landscapes Soutine painted there marked the emergence of his mature style. Soutine spent most of the remainder of his life in Paris. He exhibited little during his lifetime and relentlessly reworked or destroyed old canvases, but his paintings nevertheless found their way into French and American private collections and museums. Soutine died in France in 1943 during the wartime German occupation.

Soutine is most popularly associated with his studies of choirboys and cooks and his series of pageboys (e.g., “Page Boy at Maxim's,” 1927; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo). Also well known are his paintings of hung poultry and carcasses of beef, which convey the colour and luminosity of putrescence. He obtained these effects by painting in as many as 40 different hues with as many brushes.

Soutine's portraits from the 1920s, distinguished by their subjects' twisted faces and distorted limbs and by the emphasis in each canvas on one brilliant colour, frequently red, are among his most expressive works.

Moise kisling

Born 1891

Died 1953

Moise Kisling was born in Kracow, Poland. He began to draw as a very young child and though his parents wished him to be an engineer, he entered the Art Academy of Kracow when he was fifteen. He studied under a professor who introduced him to French Impressionist art, and encouraged him to go to Paris. He arrived in 1910, and settled in Montparnasse, where he became popular among the group of artists living and working there, the so-called School of Paris. Kisling joined the Foreign Legion in 1914, at the outbreak of WW 1. Though he was seriously wounded during his first year of service, he was rewarded with French citizenship. Kisling continued to live in France and volunteered for army service again in 1940. When the French army was discharged at the time of the surrender to the Germans, Kisling went to the United States, and after exhibitions in New York and Washington lived in California until 1946. He then returned to France to live in Sanary-sur-Mer, on the Mediterranean coast until his death. Kisling’s art represents a synthesis of influences often found among members of the School of Paris, whose work combines French characteristics with ideas from non-French painters. Under the influence of Derain, Kisling learned to control his natural exuberance and love of colour. Nevertheless, his close and caring friendship with Modigliani - a friendship that lasted until the latter’s death – perhaps goes some way towards accounting for the faint melancholy tone that inhabits the brilliant colours in some of Kisling’s portraits. Throughout his latest works, Kisling’s bursting Slavic and luxurious design are the signature of an individual style that is both lively and exciting.