Soutine, Chaïm (1893-1943)
Femme en rose (Woman in Pink)
c.1924
Oil on canvas, 73 × 54.3 cm
Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis
Chaïm Soutine twisted the form of his female subject into a swirling mass of red, coral, and yellow brushstrokes that fills most of the canvas to the edges. The gold chair bends as well, echoing the woman’s malleable body. Soutine’s vigorous, wild brushstrokes and spatial distortions counteract the formal pose and composition of the portrait. Soutine moved to Paris from his native Belarus, then part of Russia, in 1913 and joined a group of avant-garde artists that included Amedeo Modigliani and Jacques Lipchitz, both of whose work is on view in this gallery. Soutine, who was Jewish, would later die from illness while hiding from the Nazis during their occupation of Paris. (SLAM)