Pinchus Kremegne

Pinchus Krémègne (also Krémègne or Kremen, Russian Пинхус Кремень; born July 28, 1890 in Schaludok at Lida / Belarus; † 5 April 1981 Ceret / France), was a French painter of Russian Jewish descent.

Life

Pinchus Krémègne was the youngest of seven children of a Russian Jewish family of craftsmen. His siblings emigrated from Russia to the United States after they had participated in tsar hostile meetings.

Despite the Jewish prohibition of images, he could visit the art school in 1909 in Vilna, where he studied sculpture and Chaim Soutine met for the first time.

After the Jews in Russia was prohibited the acquisition of a passport, he left Russia in 1912 secretly and traveled to Paris. Here he settled in the artists' colony La Ruche down in the 15th arrondissement. The living here, mostly foreign artists will be later referred to as first École de Paris. Krémègne befriended especially with Chaim Soutine, Modigliani, Fernand Léger, Marc Chagall and André Derain.

In 1914 he exhibited in the Salon des Independants of three sculptures. At that time, the school of Rayonism, shows for the Krémègne interest begins.

During the First World War Krémègne remained in Paris, where some art dealer Paul Guillaume and Leopold Zborowski as interested in his work.

In 1923, he met in the Montparnasse quarter Birgit Strömbäck, governess in the family Nobel, whom he married. In the next year his son Fred Kremen was born. After successes in the 1920s, many artists were struggling due to the economic crisis with financial difficulties. 1939 moved his wife and son to Sweden, the home of his wife. After the French defeat in June 1940 Krémègne fled into Correze, where he lived as a farm laborer until the war ended.

In 1945 he returned to Paris, where he found his studio intact. He bought a plot of land in the south of France, Ceret and separated from his wife. After several exhibitions in Paris and abroad he commuted to the end of his life between Paris and Ceret, where he died in 1981 at the age of 91 years. He was buried in the Cimetière Montparnasse.