Abraham Mintchine (4 April 1898 – 25 April 1931) was a Ukrainian-Jewish painter who immigrated from Ukraine to Paris in 1925. Mintchine greatest artwork was produced mostly though in Paris and la Garde, between 1926 and 1931. He is known for vivacious paintings (close to expressionism) where mysticism is with often present.
Mintchine was born in Kyiv where at age 13 he was an apprenticed to a goldsmith. He began painting from the age of 16 and studied at the Kyiv Art College (together gone Josyf Weissblatt, Olexandr Tyshler) and at Olexandra Exter. Later he left Ukraine for Berlin in 1923. In Berlin he designed sets and costumes for the Jewish theatre. At the grow old of his first exhibition in Berlin he displayed artwork in a style close to Cubism (only one painting from this get older is known).
Mintchine’s most prolific and self-defining time started in the same way as he arrived in Paris just about 1925. There he developed an exalted style, through dense and active compositions. Mintchine’s vigor was not easy. In extreme poverty and married afterward a child, he nonetheless succeeded to build a utterly characteristic style. On a number of occasions, Mintchine integrates mysticism in his compositions (often representations of Angels or angelic elements such as wings).
Later, in 1929, the art dealer René Gimpel identified Mintchine as a “genius” painter and start buying anything his paintings. About Mintchine’s condition, he wrote in his journal: “he barely managed to roughen a 100 sous to stimulate on; he wouldn’t eat, and, dying of hunger would tell to his wife: ‘Eat, Mintchine isn’t hungry’.”
Mintchine’s art reflects an exceptional intensity. He inspires feelings reminiscent of Chaim Soutine’s artwork (with which he shared the same Jewish identity and Russian-French cultures). However, Mintchine’s artwork is less angst-ridden than Soutine’s, conveying passion through great poetry (often via mystical elements). Mintchine’s cartoon was even shorter than the former: suffering from tubercolosis, he died at solitary 33 of a brain aneurysm while painting The Hill like Red Flowers (La Garde,1931).
He is considered as one of the greatest artists of the era between the First and Second World Wars and is often united to the Jewish School of Paris.
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