Soutines Last Journey

August 6 1943. Chaim Soutine a Jewish painter from Belorussia and a contemporary of Chagall Modigliani and Picasso is hidden in a hearse thats traveling from a small town on the Loire towards Nazioccupied Paris. Suffering from a stomach ulcer he urgently needs a lifesaving operation. But the hearse must avoid the occupiers checkpoints and it becomes increasingly likely that he will not survive the journey. In a stream of extraordinary images the morphineinduced artist hallucinates and remembers his life. He dreams of his childhood in Smilovichi near Minsk his beginnings as a painter in Vilna his arrival in 1913 in the art capital of the world Paris where he befriends Modigliani and his survival of years of struggle and finding sudden success only to be persecuted and forced into hiding when the Nazis invade. Back in the present the painter believes that the power of milk is the only possible remedy for his ulcer. In his mind he is travelling to a white paradisea strange clinic where a god in white declares him healed but forbids him to paint. But for Soutine neither paradise nor salvation exists if he cannot paint. So he begins to paint again in secret willing to pay the price of discovery. A brilliant biographical novel about childhood longing friendship bodily pain and the wounds of exile Ralph Dutlis Soutines Last Journey is ultimately an exploration of language and the power of art.