Soutine's Landscape

Chaïm Soutine's Landscape carries traces of Smilovichi, the village where he spent his childhood and where trees were held sacred — a belief he kept well into adulthood. True to Expressionism, everything in the painting bends and twists; the houses are so distorted that, without their windows and roofs, they'd barely read as houses at all.

The palette here is notably brighter than in his earlier work, a shift that traces back to his years living in the south of France, where strong sunlight naturally found its way into his paintings. Around this time, Soutine had a habit of destroying any canvas that failed to please him — which makes it fortunate that this one survived, evidently to his liking.