Chaim Soutine (January 13, 1893-August 9, 1943) was born in Minsk to Zalman Moiseevich Sutin and his wife Sarah Khlamovna. He studied art in Vilnius, then traveled to Paris, where he studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where he developed a technique that art historians describe as a bridge between representational painting and abstract expressionism. Soutine emphasized shape, color, and texture rather than representation.
Among his friends in Paris was Amedeo Modigliani, who became another famous Jewish artist. They painted portraits of each other. After art dealer Albert Barnes purchased 60 of Soutine’s paintings in 1923, Soutine celebrated by hiring a taxi to drive him from Paris to nice, more than 400 miles away.
He horrified neighbors and another famous Jewish artist, Marc Chagall, by keeping the carcass of a cow in his studio so he could paint a portrait of it, despite the stench. Soutine hid from the German Nazi invaders in Paris, but had to emerge for surgery on a perforated ulcer, which was unsuccessful, prompting his death.
Tomorrow, January 14: Shlomo Carlebach
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SDJA condensation of a Wikipedia article