Slonim’s Portrait of Soutine Makes American Debut at Cruz L.A. Gallery

Mirror Staff 

   Never before shown in America, Sima Slonim’s 1935 portrait of her onetime lover, the famed painter Chaim Soutine, will be featured in Slonim’s first one-woman show at Cruz L.A. Gallery. 
   All of the other works in the show were painted in the 1970s and are as “savvy and playful” as the portrait is melancholy. 
   The intensely personal work was first exhibited by Slonim (1910-1999) in 1935 during “L’oeuvre Novelle” at the Niveau Gallery in Paris, along with works by Miro, Matisse, De Chirico, Modigliani and Chagall. Subsequently, it was featured in the Paris-Palestine Exhibition at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem in 1971 and was seen most recently in 1993 during a retrospective of Slonim’s work at the Janco-Dada Museum in Ein Hod. 
Slonim died in February of this year, but her daughter and grandson have come to Los Angeles to attend the gallery’s reception on Saturday, August 14, from 7 to 10 p.m. 
   Slonim was born in Jaffa in 1910 and studied art in Tel Aviv before moving to Paris to study at the Grande Chaumiere Academy. In 1937, she moved to London to teach art privately and subsequently returned to Israel to teach at the Degania Alef Regional School. She was among the founders of the Ein Hod art colony in 1953. Her works have been exhibited throughout Europe, the Middle East and North and South America. 
   Cruz L.A. Gallery is located at 211 Windward Avenue in Venice.