CHAÏM SOUTINE (SMILAVITCHY, 1883 – PARIS, 1943) Landscape with Trees c. 1920 Oil on panel 33 × 25 cm Signed lower right Certificates Esti Dunow, New York, 15 March 2025. Included in the third edition of the catalogue raisonné of Chaïm Soutine Provenance: Important Spanish private collection, previously acquired in France. Produced in the early 1920s, at a pivotal moment in the artist’s career, this work belongs to the period when Soutine was profoundly reinventing landscape painting. Between Paris and the South of France, he developed a radically personal vision of nature, freed from any decorative concerns, in which every form becomes a vehicle for emotion. Here, the tree—a central and recurring motif in his work—does more than simply structure the composition: it embodies the very tension of the painting. The trunk, solid yet unstable, seems subject to an invisible force; the foliage, swept away by the wind, invades the pictorial space to the point of almost obliterating the sky, reduced to a faint, luminous breath. The houses, relegated to the background, appear to be absorbed by this organic surge, fragile in the face of nature’s power. What Soutine paints is not a specific place, but a sensation. Nature comes alive, almost unsettling, animated by an inner movement that the artist’s nervous and tormented brushwork renders palpable. The thick, vibrant paint seems to work its way across the surface like a body under strain. The warm, earthy palette, dominated by deep greens, ochres and incandescent browns, reinforces this impression of raw vitality. Each brushstroke appears imbued with an expressive urgency, conveying the visceral relationship that Soutine maintains not only with painting, but also with the world around him. This work stands firmly in the tradition of the artist’s great Expressionist landscapes, alongside *Les Maisons*, *Arbre couché*, *Le Village* and *Paysage*, where nature ceases to be a mere backdrop and becomes the true subject, sometimes even the tragic protagonist of the scene. More than just a landscape, this painting is an experience. A work that does not reveal itself immediately, but which, once understood, never lets the viewer look away. It imposes its presence, fills the space, and gradually reveals what Soutine was seeking: not to represent the world, but to make one feel its tension, its violence and its inner beauty. It is precisely this intensity – rare and deeply sincere – that gives this painting all its power, and which explains why, even today, Soutine’s work continues to move us as much as it fascinates us.