Soutine / De Kooning, paint made flesh
Sep 15, 2021 - Jan 10, 2022
The exhibition explores the affinities between the work of Chaïm Soutine (1893–1943), a Russian painter of the School of Paris, and Willem de Kooning (1904-1997), the great American Abstract Expressionist. It shows how Soutine’s paintings, with their built-up surfaces and energetic brushwork, influenced the art of de Kooning and shaped his groundbreaking figurative/abstract works in the late 1940s and beyond.
Soutine / de Kooning, painting embodied is part of a series of exhibitions that the Musée de l’Orangerie curates around its own collection. It follows Apollinaire, the Eyes of the poet (2016), Dada Africa, Non-western Sources and Influences (2017), Giorgio de Chirico. Metaphysical Painting (2020) and explores how American artists perceived the French way of painting, as the Museum has done in 2018 with Water Lilies. American Abstraction and the Last Monet.
The exhibition is co-organized with the Barnes Foundation, in Philadelphia. Dr. Barnes collected a large number of Soutine’s works on the advice of Paul Guillaume, whose collection laid the foundation of the collection for the Musée de l’Orangerie.
Exhibition displayed at the Barnes Foundation of Philadelphia from March 7 to August 8, 2021.
Curators:
Claire Bernardi, Chief Curator at the Musée d’Orsay
Simonetta Fraquelli, Consultant Curator for the Barnes Foundation