Chaïm Soutine. Gegen den Strom

In the organizer's words:

The Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen is dedicated to the magnificent work of Chaïm Soutine (1893 - 1943). His expressive paintings shed light on his life as a Jewish emigrant and are at the same time testimonies to a changeable existence on the fringes of society. With around 60 paintings, the exhibition at K20 deliberately concentrates on the artist's early masterpieces and focuses on the series created between 1918 and 1928.

Chaïm Soutine is one of the great painters of classical modernism. His unique paintings are both sensitive and drastic. With fierce ductus, explosions of color and distortions of form, he creates declarations of love for life and for people at the lowest rung of society - an experience Soutine was able to share through his own biography. Bellhops, chambermaids, cooks, altar boys and choir boys are his models. With them, as with the paintings of wavering landscapes and slaughtered animals, he creates striking images for an entire era. A generation marked by war, social ills, and the relentless clash of religious and political worldviews. The people and motifs are deeply moving because their vulnerability gives expression to the existential fears of our time.

Chaïm Soutine grew up in a shtetl near Minsk in what is now Belarus. In 1913 he moved to Paris. Although the metropolis became his substitute home, he remained an outsider throughout his life, who initially had a poor command of the language and to whom social manners remained foreign. The experience of flight and migration, which profoundly shaped Soutine's life, resonates in his works. Among his few friends was the Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani. He ignored groups of artists as well as the leading trends of Surrealism and Cubism.

Soutine, who had an enormous influence on painting after 1945, is one of the central representatives of classical modernism; in Germany he is revered in artistic circles.

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

Audio guide to the exhibition - available exclusively and free of charge with the admission ticket!

As an actor and director, André Kaczmarczyk (*1986) inspires both theater and film audiences and now lends his voice to the audio guide of the large Chaïm Soutine exhibition in K20 of the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen. He studied at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Art in Berlin and has been an ensemble member of the Düsseldorf Schauspielhaus since 2016. Since 2021, he has been investigating as the first genderfluid chief detective, Vincent Ross, in "Polizeiruf 110."

Audible in German, English and simple language (D). Please bring your own headphones.