Chaïm Soutine: Against the Current

From September 2, 2023, the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen will present a comprehensive exhibition of the works of Chaïm Soutine (Smilavičy 1893–1943 Paris). His expressive paintings shed light on his life as a Jewish emigrant and at the same time bear witness to an unstable existence on the fringes of society. With some sixty paintings, the exhibition at K20 deliberately concentrates on the artist’s early masterpieces, focusing on the various series created between 1918 and 1928. The experience of flight and migration, which profoundly shaped Soutine’s life, resonates in his works and thus creates a bridge to the present day.

Chaïm Soutine is one of the great painters of early modernism. His unique paintings are at once sensitive and drastic. With tempestuous brushstrokes, explosions of color, and distortions of form, he creates declarations of love for life and the people who surrounded him.

Bellboys, chambermaids, cooks, altar boys, and choir boys are his models. With them, as with his paintings of swaying landscapes and slaughtered animals, he creates striking images for an entire era—a generation marked by war, social ills, and the relentless conflict between religious and political worldviews. The people and motifs depicted are deeply moving because their vulnerability also points to existential anxieties that still seem real today.

While in France and North America, Soutine is considered one of the key representatives of modernism, in Germany he is known primarily in artist circles. Apart from the K20, only a few other museums in Germany have paintings by Soutine in their collections. Even today, Soutine’s name is mentioned unusually often when contemporary artists are asked about key figures in their biographies. Although Soutine’s work was created around 100 years ago, his painting seems to be fascinatingly timeless in terms of technique and subject matter. One of the pivotal points of this exhibition is therefore the question of the topicality of Soutine’s painting. As a bridge between modernism and the present, a special interview film was produced by Louisiana Channel to accompany the exhibition. It explores the question of what accounts for the unbroken fascination with the works and the person of this special artist to this day. Dana Schutz (1972, US), Amy Sillman (1955, US), Emma Talbot (1969, UK), Leidy Churchman (1979, US), Jutta Koether (1958, Germany/US), Thomas Hirschhorn (1957, Switzerland/France), Chantal Joffe (1969, US), and Imran Qureshi (1972, Pakistan) talk about the influence Soutine has had on their careers.

Curator: Susanne Meyer-Büser

The exhibition is a cooperation between the K20K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, and the Kunstmuseum Bern.

Catalog
Chaïm Soutine. Against the Current
Edited by: Susanne Gaensheimer and Susanne Meyer-Büser, Kunstsammlung NordrheinWestfalen. Texts by Claire Bernardi, Marta Dziewańska, Catherine Frèrejean, Sophie Krebs, Susanne Meyer-Büser, Pascale Samuel
Hatje Cantz, Berlin. Separate German and English editions, 176 pages, hardcover, 32 euro

Visit our K+ Digital Guide—Digital booklet accompanying the exhibition.

Book your ticket online here.

Stay connected: Please check our website for regular updates on our program. For further information, please contact: presse [​at​] kunstsammlung.de