The expressive painting of Chaïm Soutine (1893–1943) is characterised by colour explosions, form distortions and vigorous brushstrokes. He created powerful portraits of cooks and bellboys, swaying landscapes and dizzying perspectives or slaughtered animals echoing pain and death throes.

The intense and disturbing visual language reflects the torn awareness of life of an entire era. Soutine lived in severe poverty in his homeland, in present-day Belarus, and during his first decade as a Jewish emigrant in Paris. The artist Amedeo Modigliani was one of the very few people he confided in, and he remained an outsider even after his artistic breakthrough. His motifs are deeply moving because they reflect the existential, vulnerable dimension of existence.

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

(Curator: Anne-Christine Strobel)