Chaïm Soutine (1893 - 1943)

Chaïm Soutine seems to be fascinated by the motif of the flayed ox which he represents many times in his paintings. A dozen pieces of oxen in particular are spread out over the year 1925. At that time, Soutine occupied a vast studio on rue du Saint-Gothard, not far from Montparnasse, where he had pieces of animal carcasses brought in and painted directly. This attraction to this motif may have come from a traumatic childhood memory. The journalist Emile Szyttia reports Soutine's words: ...once I saw this butcher cut the throat of a goose and bleed it. I wanted to scream, but his joyful look forced the scream down my throat, he adds further When I painted the flayed ox, it was still this scream that I wanted to release. I did not succeed. In this composition, the flayed carcass of an ox occupies most of the composition, while next to it the head of a calf hangs from a butcher's hook. The red and yellow tones, treated in broad strokes to render the bloody flesh, stand out against a plain, dark background. Beyond childhood memories, Soutine's admiration for the Dutch painter Rembrandt (1606-1669), whose paintings he had admired in the Louvre, particularly his 1655 Flayed Ox, must also be stressed.