Chaim Soutine: Genius, Obsession, and a Dramatic Life in Art

by Celeste Marcus

Overview

A revelatory biography of the Jewish expressionist painter that corrects the myths surrounding his work and proves his importance to the contemporary art world

Every major modern art museum in the world has Chaim Soutine in its collection. Yet, a full biographical study of the artist and his work does not exist. His paintings, which are shocking, grotesque, difficult, touching, and brilliant, were revered but misunderstood by his contemporaries who mistook him for an expressionist.  

In Chaim Soutine, Celeste Marcus offers a compelling history of the artist, taking us from his early days in eastern Europe to his life in Paris among other artists such as Chagall and Modigliani, to his death in France during the German invasion. Marcus highlights how his Jewish identity dictated his dark fate even while he personally abandoned his heritage, and she reveals the conditions in which he created his most intriguing paintings. What emerges is a thorough examination of an artist who defied the conventional standards of beauty in the 1920s and 1930s and an immersive look into the expressionist movement that flourished during the interwar period and influenced the most popular artists of today.   

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541703247
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	10/28/2025
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304

About the Author

Celeste Marcus is the managing editor of Liberties: A Journal of Culture and Politics, which she helped to found. She lives in Washington, DC.  

Editorial Reviews

It’s not often that an art history book comes along so sharply perceptive about its subject and so grippingly written that reading it is akin to the thrilling experience of looking at the paintings themselves. This is what Celeste Marcus has achieved in her transformative account of Chaim Soutine. He is here in all his majestic peculiarity and intensity but most importantly he is here, at last, on his own terms, the vitality and power of the paint conveyed with all the intelligence and absorption his astonishing work deserves.”—Simon Schama, author of The Story of the Jews

“This gorgeously written account of one of the most fascinating artistic lives in modern history is an illumination. Chaim Soutine has often been described as enigmatic and elusive, yet as Marcus says, ‘he is there, right before our eyes,’ in his art. This book opens our eyes to him as never before.”—David A. Bell, Princeton University

“Chaim Soutine was a painter of startling originality whose work seems to capture the dream-like feel of life. In this remarkable book, Marcus traces the wellsprings of Soutine’s vision and shows us how he saw his world.”
 —Dexter Filkins, author of The Forever War

“Celeste Marcus’s life of the great Russian French painter Soutine is more than a biography. In her passionate reconsideration, Marcus sets out to rescue Soutine from interpretations she judges wrong-headed: Clement Greenberg’s dogma about abstraction, or projections of Expressionist suffering or Jewish victimhood. For Marcus, Soutine is a painter of energy, and her scrupulous, detailed story is charged with her own argumentative energy. She has drawn the paintings and lived in the archives, and she tells Soutine’s life, as if from the inside out, with zeal, devotion, and eloquence.”—Rosanna Warren, author of Max Jacob: A Life in Art and Letters

From the Publisher