Pinchus Kremegne (Latvian, 1890-1981)

Pinchus Kremegne was a Latvian painter and sculptor. He was born near Vilnius, where at the age of 19 he enrolled at the School of Fine Arts. As a student in Vilnius, he became friends with Chaim Soutine and Michel Kikoine. Due to Kremegne's Jewish heritage and the growing anti-semitic sentiments, he realised that if he were to reach his full artistic potential he would have to leave. In 1912 he left for Paris, specifically La Ruche in Montparnasse. Kremegne urged his friend Soutine to also make the move to Paris, as Kikoine had already done in 1911.

Kremegne at first practised sculpting and exhibited pieces at Salon des Indépendents in 1914. From 1915, however, he focused on painting. Cubism, Fauvism and Expressionism had a particularly strong influence on his style. He became part of a tightly knit community of artists who lived and worked in Montparnasse, among them Soutine and Kikoine, André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, Max Jacob, Marc Chagall, Amedeo Modigliani, Lazare Volovick and Vladimir Naïditch.

Throughout his life Pinchus Kremegne created an impressive body of works, specifically striking are the powerfully expressive landscapes that he painted in Cérét in the latter part of his creative life. Another significant section of Kremegne’s oeuvre is large still lifes that he painted in the 1920s and 1930s. Although Pinchus Kremegne has always remained in the shadow of bigger names in 20th-century art history like Chagall and Soutine, it has recently been recognised that Kremegne's final years of artistic activity strongly influenced and prefigured British artists, Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff.

Pinchus Kremegne exhibited widely and successfully. Mainly at the Paris Salons: Salon des Indépendents, Salon D'Automne and Salon des Tuileries. He was the subject of regular solo-shows in Paris from 1923 and held personal exhibitions in London (Whitechapel Gallery, 1921) and Philadelphia. In 1998 Galerie Aittouarès (Paris) organised a retrospective exhibition of all of his paintings.