Still Life with Rayfish

Chaïm Soutine, 1923

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Artist: Chaïm Soutine (Russian, 1893–1943)
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: Unframed: 80.5 x 64.5 cm (31 11/16 x 25 3/8 in.)
Culture: Russia (worked in France), 20th century
Museum: Cleveland Museum of Art
Rights: CC0 — no rights reserved

The mutilated ray fish in this painting is strung across the top of the canvas, as if tortured or crucified, as its internal organs spill forth. The fish seems to express human anguish, transforming it into a powerful metaphor for suffering. Below the fish is a kettle that seems to twist away from the fish. Chaïm Soutine frequently depicted animal carcasses in his paintings, highlighting their vulnerability and the violence of their deaths. Such paintings may allude to his own despair, from his youth as the 10th of 11 children of parents in poverty in a small Orthodox Jewish community in what is now Belarus, to his early years in Paris as a struggling artist.