Jules Pascin

Bulgarian, 20th Century

Julies or Jules Pascin was born on March 31, 1885 in Widdin or Vidin. He was active in France from 1905 and later naturalized in the USA. He was a painter, watercolorist, draughtsman, engraver, and illustrator of figures, nudes, and genre scenes.

Pascin’s mother was Italian and his father a prosperous Spanish corn merchant established in Bulgaria. He spent part of his childhood in Bucharest, where the family moved in 1891, and attended secondary school first in Kronstadt (now Brasov), then in Vienna in 1895. He left the family home in 1902 and started studying painting. From 1903-1904, he attended the Moritz Heymann School of art in Munich, and while he was there, he sold cartoons to satirical journals and humorous magazines such as Simplicissimus and Jugend. He studied briefly in Berlin where he befriended George Grosz. In 1905, at his parent’s request, he changed his name to Pascin, and anagram of his surname (Julius Mordecai Pincas). At the end of the year, he went to Paris and settled in Montparnasse where he joined the cosmopolitan artists circle. He frequented the Café du Dome with such artists as Grosz and Rudolf Grossmann and continued to work for German publishing houses.

In 1906, Pascin moved to Montmartre, staying there until 1911 when he moved into a studio in Montparnasse. In 1910, he traveled to Spain and Portugal and in 1913, returned to Bulgaria for the last time to attend his mother’s funeral. In 1914, Pascin moved to London, then to New York, probably to avoid being enlisted in the Bulgarian army. In New York, he turned to illustration again as a means of income and became part of the artists’ circle based around the Penguin Club. He traveled extensively in the Southern states (Louisiana, North Carolina, and Florida) and in Cuba, married the painter Hermine David in 1918 and became an American citizen in 1920.

In 1920, Pascin returned to Paris and stayed there for the best part of a decade, leading a hedonistic life in both Montparnasse and Montmartre, becoming a major figure of the Ecole de Paris and the so-called Roaring Twenties. In 1921, he traveled to Tunisia, to Italy in 1925, and to Egypt the following year, on his way to Palestine, into which he refused to enter. He returned only briefly to New York in 1927 – 1928. In 1929, Pascin traveled in Spain and Portugal and signed a contract with Galerie Bernheim-Jeune & Cie the same year, which gave them exclusivity on all of his output. Unsatisfied with his paintings and the evolution of his career, and suffering from cirrhosis of the liver and the first bouts of syphilis, he committed suicide in 1930, on the eve of one of his exhibitions.

Pascin initially adopted the Jugendstil style, alternating flat images with highly decorative compositions. He soon developed a very personal, impetuous and intense manner of drawing, which was influenced by the Expressionist painters. He started painting in Paris, briefly experimenting with the Cubist style, but soon abandoned this analytic approach, which was too far removed from his inclination towards observation. Nonetheless, both Expressionism and Cubism left their mark on his figurative style, which offers a highly personal vision of his environment. While he remained an obsessive draughtsman, and used all kinds of materials such as matches drenched in ink and water, coffee or other solvent liquids, his highly expressive, vibrating line conveyed both movement and sensuality. In the USA, Pascin recorded his travels in the South and the Caribbean in pencil sketches, sometimes touching them up with delicate washes of color. He represented field workers and tropical landscapes.

As a painter, Pascin was generally criticized. His iridescent compositions inspired by the Bible or Antiquity, where grotesque subjects milled on dark backgrounds, were said to lack substance. He admired Boucher, Fragonard, and 18th century Venetian painting. He refuted academicism, and was often treated as pornographer because of his erotic drawings. His art combines allegory and provocation and demonstrates Dionysian approach to life by an artist with a gift for satire and caricature. Through his fluid draughstmenship and sparing use of color, he achieved subtlety of atmosphere that darkened towards the end of his life with the use of sfumato. His favorite themes were brothels and prostitutes, or café scenes, but he painted the portraits of writers and artists in his circle of acquaintance.

Pascin produced thousands of drawings, often in silver point and rarely dated. He started etching in Paris in 1920, studying with Jean-Gabriel Daragnés. He produced engravings and drawings to illustrate about twelve books, including: Memoiren des Herrn von Schnabelewopski by Heinrich Heine, etc.

Collective exhibitions include: 1910, 1913, 1927, Galerie Berthe Weill, Paris; 1911, Berlin Secession: 1912, 1914, Sounderbund-Ausstellung, Cologne; 1913, Armory Show (twelve works) New York; 1913, Salon d’Automne, Paris; 1913 Salon des Indépendants, Paris. He showed his works in individual exhibitions such as: 1907, Paul Cassirer Gallery, Berlin; 1915 Berlin Photographic Company New York; 1923, Joseph Brummer Gallery, New York; 1924, Peintres, Aquarelles, Dessins par Pascin, Galerie Pierre, Paris; 1925, Fletchtheim Gallery, Dusseldorf; 1930 Knoedler Gallery, NY; 1933 Galerie Lucy Krohg, Paris; 1958, Bezalel National Art Museum, Jerusalem; 1966, University Art Museum at UC Berkeley, UCLA, Whitney Museum of American Art; 1969 Galerie des Beaux-arts, Bordeaux; 1969 Haus der Kunst, Munich; 1970 Musée d’Art Histoire, Geneva and Palais de la Méditerranée in Nice; 1975, Pascin 1885 – 1930, National Museum, Belgrade; 1980 Galeries Nationales du Grand-Palais, Paris; 1982, Pascin Hotel de Ville, Paris ;1994, Musée-Galerie de la Seita, Paris.

Pascin has extensive auction records dating back to 1925.

Pascin is listed in the Benezit Dictionary of Artists from which this biography was compiled from an extensive Bibliography list.