Paris School

also: École de Paris

school c. 1900-1940 France Europe

The School of Paris is not a style or an institution but a name for the community of French and émigré artists who made Paris the centre of Western art in the first half of the 20th century. The critic André Warnod coined École de Paris in 1925 for the largely Jewish immigrant painters of Montparnasse - Jules Pascin, Chaïm Soutine, Marc Chagall - and the label stayed elastic, covering everyone from the Fauves and Cubists of pre-war Montmartre to the cafés and studio colonies of the 1920s. Many artists lived in La Ruche, the beehive of studios the sculptor Alfred Boucher opened in 1902. Before 1940 Paris drew talent from across Europe; after the war many of these artists moved to the United States and Israel, carrying the school's influence with them.

Example work related to "Paris School".
Example work related to "Paris School".Public domain (credit: anonymous) · source

Defining characteristics

  • No single signature look: Fauvist color, Cubist fracture, and lyrical figuration coexist under one label
  • Elongated, expressive figures and faces (Modigliani) sitting between portraiture and abstraction
  • Distorted, emotionally charged forms and thick, turbulent brushwork (Soutine)
  • Bright folkloric color and dreamlike narrative drawn from Eastern European Jewish life (Chagall)
  • Intimate subjects - studio portraits, nudes, the artists' own circle - painted in Montparnasse
  • Modernist flattening of space alongside a stubbornly humanist subject

Key figures

  • Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) — Twin pre-war leader of the school and of Cubism
  • Marc Chagall (1887-1985) — Émigré dreamer who fused avant-garde color with Jewish folklore
  • Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920) — Painter-sculptor of the Montparnasse circle, known for elongated portraits
  • Chaïm Soutine (1893-1943) — Expressionist portraitist and painter of distorted, visceral still lifes
  • Jules Pascin (1885-1930) — Chronicler of the émigré studios, the 'prince of Montparnasse'

Example works

  • I and the Village — Marc Chagall (1911)
  • Nu couché — Amedeo Modigliani (1917)
  • Carcass of Beef — Chaïm Soutine (c. 1925)

Sources

← Back to the catalog