"He [Soutine] was one of the rare examples in our day.. ..a painter who could make his pigments breathe light. It is something which cannot be learned or acquired. It is a gift of God."
Chaïm Soutine was a French painter of Belarusian-Jewish origin of the School of Paris, who made a major contribution to the Expressionist movement while living and working in Paris.
"I never touched Cubism myself, you know, although I was attracted by it one time. When I was painting at Céret and at Cagnes [1919, and from 1923]. I yielded to its influence in spite of myself, and the results were not entirely banal. But then.. .Céret itself is anything but banal. There is so much foreshortening in the landscape that, for that very reason, a picture may seem to have been painted in some specific style [quote in 1927]."
"You dont like my painting, you only want to help me. If you had given me one franc for my picture I would have taken it [when M. Castaing discovered his art for the very first time and offered him in advance 100 franc to make a new painting - circa 1917 – 1919]"
"There are some who believe that Soutine deforms his paintings just to deform. That is a grave error. He himself suffers in front of these formless canvases where his marvelous universal staggers like his own insides. At home, he lacerates his paintings in rage. At the dealers, he buys them back to take them away and destroy them."
"You have no right to interfere with my art. Your wife is not your property. I need her, in order to finish my picture, I must have her! I will sue you! [the woman returned by persuasion of the Castaings who supported Soutine]."
"..My paintings are a heap of shit, but better than Modigliani, Marc Chagall, and Krémènge [a Russian companion painter]. Some day I will destroy my canvases, but they are too cowardly to do it."
"I think I would choose Chaim Soutine.. .Ive always been crazy about Soutine - all of his paintings. Maybe its the lushness of the paint. He builds up a surface that looks like a material, like a substance. Theres a kind of transfiguration, a certain fleshiness in his work.. .I remember when I first saw the Soutine’s in the Barnes Collection.. ..the Matisses had a light of their own, but the Soutines had a glow that came from within the paintings - it was another kind of light."