Impact of Chaim Soutine: De Kooning, Pollock, Dubuffet, Francis Bacon, The

If the contorted imagery and wild brushwork of French Expressionist Chaim Soutine became key features of French modern art in the 1920s, they also exerted a lasting and meaningful influence on many major post-war painters. Willem de Kooning considered Soutine his favorite painter, and Jackson Pollock's late work "Scent" was a homage to the Lithuanian-born painter. Jean Dubuffet's concept of art was affected by Soutine's seemingly untaught and direct manner, and Francis Bacon was dramatically affected by his ability to freely capture the essence of the personage portrayed. Through key paintings, especially those created in the decade after 1918, The Impact of Chaim Soutine reveals not only the seminal power and reverberant originality of this 20th-century artist, but also the depth and expressiveness that his influence added to the art of four of the most important American, French, and British artists.

Chaim Soutine was born in Lithuania in 1893. He turned to art despite the opposition of his orthodox Jewish family, and moved to Paris to study art when he was 20. He spent time in Ceret, the town in the French Pyrenees where the Cubists had lived before World War II, and also in Cagnes, but eventually moved back to Paris, where he died in 1943.