School of Paris
The School of Paris refers to the French and émigré artists who worked in Paris in the first half of the 20th century.
The School of Paris was not a single art movement or institution, but refers to the importance of Paris as a centre of Western art in the early decades of the 20th century. Between 1900 and 1940 the city drew artists from all over the world and became a centre for artistic activity. The term School of Paris, coined by André Warnod, was used to describe this loose community, particularly of non-French artists, centered in the cafes, salons and shared workspaces and galleries of Montparnasse.
Many artists of Jewish origin formed a prominent part of the School of Paris and later heavily influenced art in Israel with some immigrating to Israel.File:DufyRaoul RegattaAtCowes.jpg|thumb|300px|Raoul Dufy, Regatta at Cowes, 1934, Washington D.C. National Gallery of Art
Before World War I the name was also applied to artists involved in the many collaborations and overlapping new art movements, between Post-Impressionists and Pointillism and Orphism, Fauvism and Cubism. In that period the artistic ferment took place in Montmartre and the well-established art scene there. By the 1920s Montparnasse had become a centre of the avant-garde. After World War II the name was applied to another different group of abstract artists.
Early artists and extent
Before World War I, a group of expatriates in Paris created art in the styles of Post-Impressionism, Cubism and Fauvism. The group in its broader sense included artists like Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Amedeo Modigliani and Piet Mondrian. Associated French artists included Pierre Bonnard, Henri Matisse, Jean Metzinger and Albert Gleizes. Whilst in its more narrow description described Chagall and Modigliani as prominent members of the early school. Picasso and Matisse have been described as twin leaders of the school before the war. However the term School of Paris was only coined after the war by André Warnod and mostly used to describe the mainly Jewish group of immigrant artists which included Jules Pascin, Yitzhak Frenkel, Chaïm Soutine, Marc Chagall and others in the 1920s and 1930s.La Ruche
Many École de Paris artists lived in the iconic La Ruche, a complex of studio apartments and other facilities in Montparnasse on the Left Bank, at 2 Passage Dantzig, built by a successful sculptor, Alfred Boucher, who wanted to develop a creative hub where struggling artists could live, work and interact. Built from materials dismantled from the Medoc Wine Pavilion from the 1900 Paris World's Fair, it comprised 50 modest studios with large windows that let in a lot of light, with nearby buildings providing 50 more studios for the overflow of artists. Boucher called the complex La Ruche – French for "beehive" – because he wanted the artists to work like bees in a beehive; he dedicated a large room in the complex where the poorer artists could draw a model that he paid for, and included a small theater space for plays and concerts. La Ruche opened in 1902, with the blessing of the French government. It was often the first destination of émigré artists who arrived in Paris eager to join the art scene and find affordable housing. Living and working in close quarters, many artists forged lasting friendships, e.g., Chaïm Soutine with Modigliani, Chagall and poet Blaise Cendrars, and influenced each other's works. Artists who lived and worked in La Ruche include Amedeo Modigliani, Yitzhak Frenkel, Diego Rivera, Tsuguharu Foujita, Jacob, Soutine, Michel Kikoine, Moïse Kisling, Pinchus Krémègne, Ossip Zadkine, Jules Pascin, Marc Chagall, Amshey Nurenberg, Jacques Lipchitz, and more.After World War I
The term "School of Paris" was used in 1925 by André Warnod to refer to the many foreign-born artists who had migrated to Paris. The term soon gained currency, often as a derogatory label by critics who saw the foreign artists—many of whom were Jewish—as a threat to the purity of French art. Art critic Louis Vauxcelles, noted for coining the terms "Fauvism" and "Cubism", called immigrant artists unwashed "Slavs disguised as representatives of French art". Waldemar George, himself a French Jew, in 1931 lamented that the School of Paris name "allows any artist to pretend he is French...it refers to French tradition but instead annihilates it."School of Paris artists were progressively marginalised. Beginning in 1935, articles about Chagall no longer appeared in art publications, and by June 1940 when the Vichy government took power, School of Paris artists could no longer exhibit in Paris at all.
The artists working in Paris between World War I and World War II experimented with various styles including Cubism, Orphism, Surrealism and Dada. Foreign and French artists working in Paris included Jean Arp, Joan Miró, Constantin Brâncuși, Raoul Dufy, Tsuguharu Foujita, artists from Belarus like Michel Kikoine, Pinchus Kremegne, the Lithuanian Jacques Lipchitz and Arbit Blatas, who documented some of the greatest representatives of the School of Paris in his oeuvre, the Polish artists Marek Szwarc and Morice Lipsi and others such as Russian-born prince Alexis Arapoff.
A significant subset, the Jewish artists, came to be known as the Jewish School of Paris or the School of Montparnasse. The "core members were almost all Jews, and the resentment expressed toward them by French critics in the 1930s was unquestionably fueled by anti-Semitism." One account points to the 1924 Salon des Indépendants, which decided to separate the works of French-born artists from those by immigrants; in response critic referred to them as the School of Paris. Jewish members of the group included Emmanuel Mané-Katz, Abraham Mintchine, Chaïm Soutine, Adolphe Féder, Marc Chagall, Yitzhak Frenkel Frenel, Moïse Kisling, Maxa Nordau and Shimshon Holzman.
The artists of the Jewish School of Paris were stylistically diverse. Some, like Louis Marcoussis, worked in a Cubist style, but most tended toward expression of mood rather than an emphasis on formal structure. Their paintings often feature thickly brushed or troweled impasto. The Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme has works from School of Paris artists including Pascin, Kikoine, Soutine, Mintchine, Orloff and Lipschitz.
Jewish School of Paris
France
Artists of Jewish origin had a marked influence in the École de Paris. Paris, the capital of the art world, attracted Jewish artists from Eastern Europe, several of them fleeing persecution, discrimination and pogroms. Many of these artists settled in Montparnasse. Several Jewish painters were notable in the movement; these include Marc Chagall and Jules Pascin, the expressionists Chaïm Soutine and Isaac Frenkel Frenel as well as Amedeo Modigliani and Abraham Mintchine. Many Jewish artists were known for depicting Jewish themes in their work, and some artists' paintings were imbued with heavy emotional tones. Frenkel described the artists as "members of the minority characterized by restlessness whose expressionism is therefore extreme in its emotionalism".The term l'École de Paris coined by the art critic André Warnod in 1925 in the magazine Comœdia, was intended by Warnod to negate xenophobic attitudes towards the foreign artists, many of whom were Eastern European Jews. Louis Vauxcelles, a prolific critic of Jewish painters, wrote several monographs for the publisher Le Triangle. In a 1931 monograph, he wrote: "like a swarm of locusts, an invasion of Jewish colorists fell on Paris – on the Paris of Montparnasse. The causes of this exodus: the Russian revolution, and all that it brought with it of misery, pogroms, exactions, persecutions; the unfortunate young artists take refuge here, attracted by the influence of contemporary French art.... They will constitute what the young critic will call the School of Paris. Many talents are to be considered in this crowd of s."
Following the Nazi occupation of France, several prominent Jewish artists died during the Holocaust, leading to the dwindling of the Jewish School of Paris. Others managed to leave or fled Europe, mostly to Mandate Palestine or the US.
Israel
Jewish art in Mandate Palestine was dominatly inspired by the École de Paris between the 1920s and 1940s, with French art continuing to strongly influence Israeli art for the following decades. This phenomenon began with the return of École de Paris Isaac Frenkel Frenel to Mandatory Palestine in 1925 and his opening of the Histadrut Art Studio. His students were encouraged to continue their studies in Paris, and upon their return to Pre-Independence Israel amplified the influence of the Jewish artists of the School of Paris they encountered.These artists, centered in Montparnasse in Paris and in Tel Aviv and Safed in Israel, tended to portray humanity and the emotion evoked through human facial expression. Furthermore, characteristically of Jewish Parisian Expressionism, the art was dramatic and even tragic, perhaps in connection to the suffering of the Jewish soul. During the 1930s several such painters would paint scenes in the Land of Israel in an Impressionist style and a Parisian light, greyer and dimmer compared to the powerful Mediterranean sun.
Artists Quarter of Safed
Safed, a city in the mountains of Galilee and one of the four holy cities of Judaism, was a centre of École de Paris artists during the mid- and late 20th century. Artists were attracted there by the romantic and mystical qualities of the Kabbalistic mountain city. The artists' quarter, founded in 1949, was formed at first by Moshe Castel, Shimshon Holzman, Yitzhak Frenkel and other artists, many of them influenced by, or part of, the School of Paris. Though not united by a common artistic trope, it was a clear bastion of École de Paris in the country.The painters of the community who were influenced by the Ecole de Paris attempted to express or reflect the mystics of Safed. Painting with colors that reflect the dynamism and spirituality of the ancient city, painting the fiery or serene sunsets over Mount Meron. Marc Chagall would walk the streets and paint portraits of religious children. Several of these artists would commute between Safed and Paris.