Soutine | Kossoff pairs two major figures of 20th century painting: one a master of the School of Paris, the other a master of the School of London.
Undertaken with the full support of the Kossoff Estate, it brings together about 40 important loans from private collections in the UK, USA and beyond. Aside from Soutine Portraits (Courtauld, 2017), at around 20 works, this is the largest group of Soutines shown together in the UK since 1982, and the first since then to show both portraits and lndscapes, providing a fascinating follow-up to The Barnes Foundation's 2021 show Soutine / De Kooning.
The discovery of Soutine's paintings in the early 1950s wa a significant moment for Kossoff, who was already finding his way towards the kind of direct and expressive use of paint he saw in his predecessor's work.
Soutine | Kossoff is the first ever museum exhibition to explore the artistic relationship between British artist Leon Kossoff (1926 - 2019) and Belarus-born painter Chaim Soutine (1893 - 1943).
The main focus of Soutine | Kossoff is on the areas of interest shared by both artists: landscape and portraiture. The exhibition features seminal landscapes painted by Soutine in southern France in the early 1920s, with highlights including Paysage aux cyprès (c.1922), and Cagnes Landscape with Tree, (c.1925-26, Tate). From Kossoff come major paintings of railway junctions, building sites and other scenes of unexpected beauty found in north and north-west London, among them Willesden Junction, Summer, No.2, (1966, Alfred East Art Gallery) and Demolition of the Old House, Dalston Junction, Summer (1974, Tate).
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