Savdie and Soutine: painting the body under pressure

Hyperallergic looks at a New York exhibition that pairs Ilana Savdie with Chaïm Soutine. The connection feels immediate: both painters treat flesh as unstable ground, charged with violence, unease, and a heightened sense of looking.

In Soutine’s work from the 1920s, an ordinary subject is pushed into drama. In Hanging Turkey, the suspended bird becomes more than a still-life motif; the restless brushwork, agitated outlines, and strained color turn the image into something almost bodily, as if the painting itself were under pressure.

Savdie’s recent work, including Galactophore, takes that sense of mutation in a different direction. The review describes her as dissolving the noise of contemporary life into organic forms, creating images that feel like inner chambers where the eye moves between attraction and discomfort.

For artists and painting or drawing enthusiasts, the exhibition is compelling for what it reveals about craft: tense composition, visible gesture, active paint, and the ability to make a depicted body into a mental space. Put together, the two painters suggest that painting can still register what is hard to hold onto, balancing recognition with strangeness.