Lot Essay
Between 1919 and 1921 Soutine spent a great deal of time in the small town of Céret in the Pyrénées. This was by far the most prolific period of his career when he produced over two hundred canvases, the majority being landscapes. In all these works Soutine's brushstroke is dramatic and highly-charged. His utter reliance on spontaneous execution, with its leaning towards abstraction, epitomizes the expressionist vision.
In a discusson of the Céret works, Monroe Wheeler has stated that "the vehement and idiosyncratic style that he developed there shocked all of Soutine's contemporaries ... It is as though this young man of thirty years ago felt that he had a world-shaking message ... The landscapes of the Pyrénées seem, indeed, to be shaken by some cosmic force; the architecture becomes flexible and billows like a canvas, the trees reel and stumble about, and the colours seem to have been wrested hungrily from the spectrum; his palette seemed to enter the dance with his forms, the colour of one whirling away from another...In exuberant celebration of the natural forms, he developed upon his canvases supernatural jewel-like pigments and arbitrary, rugged textures..it expresses what inspired it with a force of emotion stronger than most abstract canvases" (M. Wheeler, Soutine, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1950, p. 50).
In a letter dated New York, May 26, 1995, Esti Dunow has kindly confirmed the authenticity of this work and stated that it will be included in the forthcoming supplement to the Chaïm Soutine catalogue raisonné.
In a discusson of the Céret works, Monroe Wheeler has stated that "the vehement and idiosyncratic style that he developed there shocked all of Soutine's contemporaries ... It is as though this young man of thirty years ago felt that he had a world-shaking message ... The landscapes of the Pyrénées seem, indeed, to be shaken by some cosmic force; the architecture becomes flexible and billows like a canvas, the trees reel and stumble about, and the colours seem to have been wrested hungrily from the spectrum; his palette seemed to enter the dance with his forms, the colour of one whirling away from another...In exuberant celebration of the natural forms, he developed upon his canvases supernatural jewel-like pigments and arbitrary, rugged textures..it expresses what inspired it with a force of emotion stronger than most abstract canvases" (M. Wheeler, Soutine, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1950, p. 50).
In a letter dated New York, May 26, 1995, Esti Dunow has kindly confirmed the authenticity of this work and stated that it will be included in the forthcoming supplement to the Chaïm Soutine catalogue raisonné.