03/01/2026
I’d like to share today a departure from my usual style: a portrait of Chaim Soutine, part of the series Portraits of Artists, sculpted after his self-portrait (a photo of the painting is included among the images below), 24”, painted bronze.
Soutine was born in 1893 in a small Jewish shtetl near Minsk, into a poor family of eleven children. Despite many obstacles, he left home to pursue art in Vilnius and later in Paris, where he became one of the most original artists of early 20th-century Expressionism. He was a close friend of Amedeo Modigliani, and when he died in 1943, Pablo Picasso and Jean Cocteau were among the mourners at Montparnasse Cemetery, despite the wartime conditions, which speaks volumes about the respect he had earned.
The sculpture is based on a blend of several of Soutine’s works: the face is taken from his self-portrait, the fish from another painting, and the chair from a third painting in the collection of avid art collector and my dear friend Shmuel Tatz.
If you would like to watch a documentary about Soutine and Mr. Tatz’s collection, which I once helped create, you can view it here:
https://youtu.be/CijiC8yZG1s?si=M30mPXHFD7XPTeAZ
The idea for this piece came from Alexander Royzman, my ex-husband, who was closely involved from the concept stage through the foundry process, so it bears both our names.
Wishing you all a wonderful day!
