Le Monde (04/12/07)
The painters of exile are back: Soutine, Chapiro, Kisling, Pascin… These Eastern Europe Jewish painters, some of whom appear in the December 4 Artcurial art sale, emigrated to Paris in the early XXth century; some to escape anti-Semitic persecution, some to flirt with an art that, in certain cases, they hardly new the basics of. "We were a whole generation, worn out by so many years of studying and
analysing texts. We seized pencils and paintbrushes and we began dissecting not only Nature, but also ourselves", wrote El Lissitzky in 1923.
For Nadine Nieszawer, the specialist of the Jewish painters of the so called Ecole de Paris: "Circa 1905, one would either go into politics or into painting. Yet, in the schools of Fine Arts of Eastern Europe countries, the number of Jews was restricted. The Jews wanted to emancipate and were travelling to Vienna, Berlin or to Paris". Why Paris? Because this city was the cradle of the avant-garde movements, of Fauvism and Cubism. Most immigrants ended up settling down at the Ruche, a studio near Montparnasse, where the first newcomers would greet the next. These artists did not revolutionize painting, but they are interesting for their common history. "These painters in comas, in undulations, like their writing. From their childhood, these artists had been writing in Hebrew. Hebrew letters are distant from one another, deprived of anchors, they float. Amateurs of these paintings identify to the Slavic soul and to a certain sadness", notes Nadine Nieszawer. This judgement does not apply to all creators. […]
Valued from 1988 on during the art sales organized by Guy Loudmer in Drouot, the main Parisian auction room, these painters have seen their quotation rise in the last 5 years thanks to young fortunes from Russia, Check Republic and Poland. Seven or eight years from now, the canvases of the Russian artist Jacques Chapiro were worth between 200 and 3 000 euros. Today, the mark is higher. Thus, Artcurial offers, on
December 4, a portrait of The woman with the orange dress estimated between 5000 or 6000 euros.