Thursday, March 12, 6 – 7pm
Chaïm Soutine. Red Church (detail), c. 1919. The Barnes Foundation, BF953. © 2026 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
On-site $10; online $8; members and students free
About the Talk
Celeste Marcus | “Chaim Soutine: Genius, Obsession, and a Dramatic Life in Art”
Chaïm Soutine was born in a small shtetl outside Minsk in 1893. When Albert Barnes visited the artist’s Paris studio almost 30 years later, he quickly bought more than 50 works, causing a dramatic rise in Soutine’s popularity. Because of Dr. Barnes, Soutine’s name is still known around the world. But who was the man behind the name, and how was the work that Barnes collected different from everything else Soutine went on to paint afterward?
After the lecture, author Celeste Marcus will sign copies of her new book, Chaim Soutine: Genius, Obsession, and a Dramatic Life in Art, available for purchase at the Barnes Shop.
About the Book
Chaim Soutine: Genius, Obsession, and a Dramatic Life in Art offers a compelling history of the artist from his early days in eastern Europe to his life in Paris among other artists such as Chagall and Modigliani. Marcus highlights how Soutine’s Jewish identity dictated his dark fate and reveals the conditions in which he created his most intriguing paintings. Chaim Soutine is a thorough examination of an artist who defied conventional beauty standards and influenced the expressionist movement and some of today’s most popular artists.
Speaker
Celeste Marcus
Marcus is the executive editor of Liberties: A Journal of Culture and Politics. Her writing has appeared in The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, among other publications. She is a painter based in Washington, DC.
Go Further
Deep Dive: Klee’s Place-Signs
An in-depth discussion about the painting with Penn MA student Nina Huang. Free with admission; Room 17
Graduate Student Symposium on the History of Art—Keynote Lecture
Historian Steven Nelson presents “Why the Underground Railroad Matters.”
Graduate Student Symposium on the History of Art
Discover innovative research and new perspectives shaping the field of art history.