Julius Mordecai Pincas (March 31, 1885 – June 2, 1930), known as Pascin (, erroneously or ), Jules Pascin, also known as the "Prince of Montparnasse", was a Bulgarian artist of the School of Paris, known for his paintings and drawings. He later became an American citizen. His most frequent subject was women, depicted in casual poses, usually nude or partly dressed.

Pascin was educated in Vienna and Munich. He traveled for a time in the United States, spending most of his time in the South. He is best known as a Parisian painter, who associated with the artistic circles of Montparnasse, and was one of the emigres of the School of Paris. Having struggled with depression and alcoholism, he died by suicide at the age of 45.

Early life

Julius Mordecai Pincas was born in Vidin, Bulgaria, the eighth of eleven children, to the Sephardic Jewish family of a grain merchant named Marcus Pincas. Originally from the city of Ruse, the Pincas family was one of the wealthiest in Vidin; they bought and exported wheat, rice, maize and sunflower. His mother, Sofie (Sophie) Pincas, belonged to a Sephardic family, Russo, which had moved from Trieste to Zemun, where she and her husband lived before moving to Vidin and where their older children were born.

The family spoke Judaeo-Spanish at home. In 1892, he moved with his parents to Bucharest, where his father opened a grain company, "Marcus Pincas & Co". Pascin worked briefly for his father's firm at the age of fifteen, but also frequented a local brothel where he made his earliest drawings. There he got in touch with Paul Klee, Alfred Kubin and Wassily Kandinsky. Because his father objected to the family name being associated with these drawings, It was not until about 1907–1909 that he produced his first paintings, which were portraits and nudes in a style influenced by Fauvism and Cézanne.

Pascin wanted to become a serious painter, but in time he became deeply depressed over his inability to achieve critical success with his efforts. Dissatisfied with his slow progress in the new medium, he studied the art of drawing at the Académie Colarossi, and painted copies after the masters in the Louvre. He exhibited in the United States for the first time in 1913, when twelve of his works were shown at the Armory Show in New York. He also visited Cuba. He made many drawings of street life in Charleston, New Orleans, and other places he visited. Some of his works of 1915 and 1916 are in a Cubist style, which he soon abandoned.

Especially after he returned to France, he became the symbol of the Montparnasse artistic community and is more associated with France than the United States. Always in his bowler hat, he was a witty presence, along with his good friend Constant Detré, at Le Dôme Café, Jockey-Club de Paris, and the other haunts of the area's bohemian society. The closing of the chapter was especially poignant, where Hemingway writes:

<blockquote>...He looked more like a Broadway character of the Nineties than the lovely painter that he was, and afterwards, when he had hanged himself, I liked to remember him as he was that night at the Dome. They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those who make jokes in life the seeds are covered with better soil and with a higher grade of manure.</blockquote>

Pascin's fellow artist friends and contemporaries included: Chaim Soutine, Isaac Frenkel Frenel, Michel Kikoine and other Jewish artists of the School Of Paris.

Style

His experience as a satirical draftsman and his knowledge of German expressionism are evident in his early works, where some portraits evoke Otto Dix or Grosz with a less incisive and less cruel touch. He quickly evolved towards pastel-like, almost unreal colors that he skillfully harmonized with the theme of the female body, the center of his production. Among the painters of the School of Paris, Pascin, his art noted itself with the imposition of expressive truth and melancholic gentleness. He painted with indulgence the underworld "of the girls," using a pearly touch, light with iridescent colors, in shades of gray, pink, ocher, and violet-blue. The languid bodies with softened forms exuded a heavy scent of eroticism. These women, captured in their intimacy, are, in fact, the mirror of Pascin's existential malaise.

His vibrant graphic style, with lines that only vaguely outline the contours of the body, allowed him to depict his models bathed in a light that reflects more a state of mind than the reality of a body. In this regard, he can be seen as an unsparing continuator of the 18th-century masters and their taste for freedom and libertinage. thumb|Portrait of [[Mimi Laurent, c. 1927–28, oil on canvas, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC.]]

Death

Pascin struggled with depression and alcoholism. "[D]riven to the wall by his own legend", according to art critic Gaston Diehl, he died by suicide at the age of 45 on the eve of a prestigious solo show. In his last will and testament, Pascin split his estate equally between his wife, Hermine David, and Lucy Krohg.

On the day of Pascin's funeral, June 7, 1930, thousands of acquaintances from the artistic community, and dozens of waiters and bartenders from the restaurants and saloons Pascin had frequented, all dressed in black, walked behind his coffin for three miles, from his studio at 36 boulevard de Clichy to the Cimetière de Saint-Ouen.

In 2023, the former synagogue in Pascin's birthplace was reopened as the Jules Pascin Cultural Centre.

See also

  • Marc Chagall
  • Amadeo Modigliani

Notes

References

  • Alley, Ronald and Margaret Barlow. "Pascin, Jules." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web.
  • Charensol, Georges and Jules Pascin (1928). Jules Pascin. Collection "Les Artistes Juifs". Paris: Éditions "Le Triangle".
  • Diehl, Gaston (1968). Pascin. New York: Crown.
  • Dupouy, Alexandre (2014). Pascin. Parkstone Press.
  • Werner, Alfred (1972). Pascin: 110 Drawings. New York: Dover.
  • Pascin, Jules at Encyclopædia Britannica
  • Information in ArtCyclopedia
  • Jules Pascin on artnet