Chaim Soutine found his way to Expressionism through the works of Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh and Pierre Bonnard. In the circle of the artists' colony 'La Ruche', he developed a passionate colour language combined with unstable, unruly forms. With his visions of apocalyptic landscapes and his dynamic brushwork, he resembled Oskar Kokoschka and Emil Nolde. In his mature paintings, the distortions receded and the strong emotionality was somewhat repressed. Soutine discarded and destroyed his earlier works, provided he could get hold of them.
