SOUTINE | KOSSOFF HASTINGS CONTEMPORARY

Leon Kossoff: Head of Seedo (1964). Property of the Roden Family, courtesy of Hastings Contemporary

In December 1953 a 27-year-old Leon Kossoff attended the exhibition Russian Emigrés in Paris, at the Redfern Gallery in London, which included four works by the late expressionist artist, Chaim Soutine. This was the first time he had seen one of the oil painter’s works in the flesh.

Many visitors to the remarkable new show at Hastings Contemporary will be in the same boat, and will no doubt have a similar reaction: seeing your first Soutine, up close and personal, is a real wow moment.

It is likely that Kossoff’s friend and inspiration Francis Bacon had directed him to the Redfern show, and told him to pay particular attention to the Soutines. To Bacon the Belarus-born artist was something a cult figure, and a big influence: a gesturalist who painted from the heart, rather than the head, a true successor of Vincent van Gogh, and the last of the great expressionists.

Kossoff took notice, and the resulting epiphany acted as a crucial catalyst to his career. This new one-off exhibition, which is on display at the excellent south-coast gallery until September, examines the connections between the two artists, born 33 years apart, and in particular what Kossoff learnt from Soutine. Consisting of twenty works from each artist, acquired from far and wide, it constitutes a major coup for the gallery.

The connections are manifold. Both artists came from Jewish émigré families (Kossoff’s parents had escaped to London from Russia around the turn of the century, about the same time that Soutine ended up in Paris after fleeing Ukraine with his parents). Both, strongly influenced by Rembrandt, and particularly interested in landscapes and portraits, used an earthy palette, laying the paint on thick, with gestural strokes. Neither gave a hoot about following the trends of contemporary art theory: each was on a mission to conjure transcendental revelations from the stuff of day-to-day life. Art was truth, and truth was art.

They developed in different ways, of course. Soutine’s later portraits – of which there are several stunning examples – weren’t quite so wild as his earlier landscapes; if anything, Kossoff’s work became more difficult to read – less representational, more about the process of painting – as he got older.

It's a high-scoring match of an exhibition, with so many memorable offerings, that picking out highlights seems churlish. But needs must: from Soutine, Paysage aux cyprès (1922), and Le petit pâtissier (1927) stay long in the mind, not least, when it comes to the latter, for the painter’s alchemistic trick of creating white, from myriad colours. The Kossoff works on show include the monumental Childrens’ Swimming Pool, Summer Afternoon 1971 (a painting you can almost hear) and the inscrutable Head of Seedo (1964, above, which must have taken some drying).

If anything, there’s too much to digest, here, in a single visit. This is a show you’ll want to return to, several weeks later, after a period of quiet contemplation. Bravo to curator James Russell.