One painting at a time: ‘The Little Pastry Chef’ by Chaïm Soutine
Susan Gray | Prospect | 26th August 2025
Soutine’s work ramps up the emotions, sometimes almost to a level of visual violence. Emotional intensity is one ingredient of Little Pastry Chef (1927). The pose communicates “concentrated energy and vitality” while also hinting at the insecurities of youth. Soutine has chosen as his subject a hospitality worker, a new class of urban worker in an urbanising society. Individual insecurity, social turbulence – Soutine knew how to unsettle. Decades hence, Willem de Kooning took note.