Chaim Soutine

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Scrambling for cobweb, I stumbled upon a site dedicated to Soutine. Placed there texts seemed so interesting that I immediately began their преводить, so that you can get acquainted with them.

Now go to sleep, but if you like it, will be continued

In July 1942, by order, obtained from Berlin, Germany Embassy has asked the French authorities to find the artist Chaim Soutine and confiscate all his work. The Prefect of Police Commissioner Burlet Lege instructed to search for the artist, as well as collect all the information about us in a confidential file - maybe it was due to a desire to understand instructions mysterious interest in the Nazis to Soutine.

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Some believe that this interest is reflected in the price, which reached Soutine paintings, especially in the U.S. market, and the desire to sell the confiscated works. Others say that the Germans tried to simply physically destroy the Jewish Soutine Soutine and the artist in the name of the Nazi theories about the degenerative art.

For unknown reasons, Commissioner Burlet not passed the dossier to his superior. On the first page it appears inscription in red ink: "Soutine died 9.08.1943. Send the file to the archive. 10.09.0943.
We do not know how many documents were collected Burlet. There is reason to think that after the war he took some documents may be to write a biography of Soutine.

Dossier consists of nine folders containing letters, newspaper clippings and reports compiled by workers of the Prefecture of Police or other government agencies, in which Commissioner Burlet sent requests.

Report Gilbert Erebus

Prefecture Police
Section archive

PARIS, October 28, 1942

Gilbert Erebus, assistant archivist

Herr Commissioner Burlet

In response to your request for Chaim Soutine, a political refugee from Russia, living at the address: 287 Prospect Sera, I have the honor to transmit to you the following report, sostavlnny in collaboration with the attache of the Commissariat on the Jewish question, Mr. Fishterom, who kindly provided a description of specific customs of Jewish origin from Russia and specifically the Lithuanian Jews.

name: Sutin name: Chaim
Rod.: 1883 (not specified)
in: Śmiłavičy (near Minsk - Russia)
Nationality: Russia
Father: Salomon Soutine, genus. in 1851 in Pontovich, tailor
Mother: Sarah Soutine, genus. in Smilavichy
Profession:: painter
Home Address : 28, avenue Seurat, Paris
residence permit : № 1378 386, issued Aug. 4, 1914
Commissariat districts of Saint-Lambert
Renewed regularly
Criminal history : not available

Note: Registered as a Jew under the number 35702 - Office of Jewish Affairs

Chaim Soutine was born in the Lithuanian village of 400 souls. Tenth in a family with eleven children. His father was a tailor, and was in the bottom of the social hierarchy of the town.

On the basis of sources that I have read in Gosudarstvevnnoy library (the works of E. Faure, Drieux La Rochelle, V. George, and durnalov "Ihobrazitelnoe art" and "Art in Paris"), Soutine never spoke about his childhood, and this feature, among others, helped create the legend of "Soutine - the curse of the artist.

You can be sure that the life of the town, subject to the instructions of the Talmud, was an important factor in shaping personality miolodogo Soutine, but unlike other artists came from this region (Chagall, Lissitzky, Rybak ...), in his work there was no borrowing from Jewish folklore.

Nevertheless nkotorye religious rituals are the key to understanding the origin of many works Soutine.

On the morning of Yom Kippur in every home town committed ritual scapegoat, leading their descent from the biblical tradition of the scapegoat, who drove out into the desert. This ceremony consisted in the fact that at the threshold of the house slaughtered a white cock, which was served for lunch the next day to mark the end of the traditional post.

Rooster same, but not white, and black, appeared in the house of the dying, to tell him that his hours were numbered. According to legend, he heard the cock crow, deceased relatives and friends dying around him and tried his earthly affairs.

On the one hand, the real cock with a screwed up his eyes, which loses blood, in the hands zhertvoprinositelya, on the other hand, zloveschey cock of legends, became a constant subject of painting Soutine.

Memoirs

Occasionally Sutin overcomes his reluctance to talk about his childhood and described episodes also left a deep mark on his paintings.

"Odnazhny I saw the town butcher cut the throat of goose and let his blood. I wanted to scream but could not - a cheerful look of the butcher was paralyzed me ... This cry was left in me so far. When I was a kid, to get rid of the cries, I clumsily painted a portrait of my teacher ... And later I wrote bovine carcasses to the cry went out of me. But he was still in me. "

"I watched as the sunlight and shadows play on the curtains ... My father, who was sitting in the pose of the Buddha, sewed near the gray box, and then he stopped and, without raising his eyes, turned the page ... "Rabbi Mendel of Vorok klanetsya that this Jew landed three things: the absolute genuflection, silent cry and motionless dance.

Once Soutine painted a portrait of an old man and his son beat him. The magistrate awarded, the abuser must pay him 25 rubles. With this money he was able to leave the village and was accompanied by his friend Michael Kikoina come to Minsk to study art there, Mr. Kruger, who gave private drawing lessons ( "I guarantee success in 3 months!").

A year later, friends enrolled in the School of Fine Arts in Vilna rate professor rubakova. In class staged a Jewish funeral. Kikoin served as a model - he lay on the floor, and covered with a white sheet. Soutine lit candles and placed them on both sides of the "deceased".

Twice a week, Soutine dined at the dentist, who took on the Jewish tradition to help needy students - where he could eat this hot food. The eldest daughter of a dentist bvyla a little in love with a dreamy young man. Once he dazheosmelilsya kiss her, and she did not hurt. But the letter came from Paris from a flint, and Kikoin already left for Paris ...

The girl with tears in his eyes gave him a handkerchief with 50 rubles ...

His first night in Paris \ Soutine hosted Pinzasa Flint, who lived, as countless artists summoned to Paris, in a hive, in Danzig Passage.

He then spent the night alone, then the other - in Kikoina, the Inderbauma, the Meshchaninova and a Lipschitz Chagall tried unsuccessfully to persuade him to leave his studio, when he drove out of the hive (but steps are not surrendered to the persuasions: "From him too bad smell ").

In order not to starve to death, he hired workers at the Renault factory, but soon he was fired - he managed to injure his leg. Kikoin found him a night's work at the Montparnasse station.

The days he spent in museums, to live to see what he knew only by lithography, hung on the walls of schools in the \ Vilna. Waldemar George says: "This young man is always with his head bowed and frightened eyes, with whom I had not yet met, clung to the walls of the hall Courbet. Then he looked at the "Funeral at Ornans, as devout a Christian looks at the icon.

Sutin enrolled in Fernand Pestru, nicknamed hormones in Gosudarstvennots School of Fine Arts, which already studied Kikoin.

He devoured meager victuals Kikoina. Finishing their last crust of bread, he said, apologetically: "This is my worms ..."

Sculptor Ingenbaum recalls:

"Soutine found me on the terrace of the Rotunda, and asked me for thirty francs.
- When you have money, you're gone - I said - and wasted it, you come to me "- and walked away, leaving him in front of a cafe.

But he was being watched and muttered:
- Give me thirty francs, give me thirty francs, give me thirty francs ...
- And all these canvases, which you sold me, and then took back?
Sutin, plunging his head into his shoulders, lamented:
- Oh, oh, oh ...

Reaching the area Konvanson, I bought a herring.
- And now you write me a still life!
He went to his workshop. Two hours later he appeared with the picture, on which were painted fishes on a yellow plate and two forks. I gave him thirty francs, and now the buttons attached to the wall. Chereschz two days he came to me and asked me to lend him this picture. I agreed - the last time. A few days spkstya, I found this picture at Delevskogo, who said to me:

- He asked for her five francs, I gave three.

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War in 1914, Soutine was granted political refugee status and residence permit. He went to visit Kikoin, who lived with his wife in Franville, okolol LIVRY GARGAN.

He walked all around looking for landscapes that have inspired him. But as soon as someone close to him, he tears canvas with an easel and presses it to his chest - paint inside. Wife Kikoina every evening laundered his jacket turpentine.

At this time, a wobble of the book by Otto Preminger Race and nature »(Geschlecht und Charakter) Sutin worked day and night, as if he wanted to prove to yourself that you can be a Jew and a great artist. Śmiłavičy pressed on him, he sought recognition. Kikoin soothed him, tried to instill in them confidence.

"He asked me to express my opinion about his paintings, but he was incredibly shy and bashful. It seemed that he wants to advance to protect their canvases from my criticism, which was reflected in the raging torrent of words - he explained his vision.

Kremen also supported him, but neither flint nor Kikoin he did not understand.

In 1916, Soutine left the Hive and rented a studio in Cité Falner. There sculptor Lipchitz introduced him to Modigliani.

On the food they had no money, it replaced the red wine. It turns out that Soutine gastric ulcer. As Modigliani, has left him to live long - TB is killing him ...

One night, after returning from a cafe, they dug a trench in ground floor bedrooms and surrounded by mountains of ashes, to protect against bugs - but nothing trench did not help - the artist Richard took Soutine, who got the bug in his ear to the hospital ...

"Sitting almost on the stove, ðàñïàðèòü and not like a piece of raw meat, Soutine dying of heat and bliss. To soothe the pain in his stomach, he had to go to the regime of boiled potatoes and sour - it reminded him of his native town. Soutine starts to dance, Korça fearful faces.

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Extrovert Modigliani unsociable Soutine took under his wing. They drank together. Once Soutine tried to take care of a soubrette, was encountered at Kikoin. "Your hand is smooth as a plate" - found a Soutine, who understood that the lady was expecting a compliment ...

He absolutely could not stand that someone saw how it works and even people to see his work in his presence.

Modigliani introduced him vmir art. He introduced it with Sharon, who had a gallery on the streets of La Boesi, then with Zborovsky, which made the purchase from Flint Soutine painting.

Zborowski Soutine says its customers - doctors, industrialists, writers - and sells them to his work for thirty to fifty francs.

"I was present when Modigliani painted a portrait of Soutine in 1917 on the door of the dining room. While we were at the table eating cooked me minestrone, Having eaten his fill Modigliani said Sutin:


- Wait, I'll write your portrait.

He got up, grabbed a palette podoshgel to the door and op! Soutine threw his head in a hat with absurd margins "(Ms. Zborovskaya).

Although Zborowski at the time was not a stitch, he gave Soutine daily content in three francs.

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Modigliani's Jeanne Hebuterne went to the south and Soutine were invited to join them.

VENCE Soutine lived with Felice Cendrars, first wife of the writer.
Zborowski sent him some money to buy paint and canvas, as well as 200 francs on account of the result of his work. But the result disappointed him.

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In the January issue of "Art in Paris," Paul Guillaume's article:

"Once, I went into the workshop of one artist to see the Modigliani painting, I noticed in the corner of the picture, which I am very pleased. It was Soutine, the painting depicted a pastry - pastry unreal, fantastic, awarded by the artist and a magnificent giant ear, a sudden and quite correct, it was a masterpiece! I bought it. Then Dr. Barnes saw it from me.
- But it is incredible! - He cried. Enthusiasm, which he experienced from this picture, decided the fate of Soutine, his sudden success, from day to day, his paintings began to enjoy great demand, it is recognized.