One of the most important strands of French art between the two World Wars, The School of Paris also refers more generally to the incredible concentration of artistic talent in Paris in the first half of the twentieth century. The School of Paris does not refer to a movement or style, but to a number of outstanding individual artists, predominantly of non-French origin, who worked with great independence and originality in the French capital. The most famous of these artists include Amadeo Modigliani , Marc Chagall, Jules Pascin and Pablo Picasso. The School of Paris more specifically refers to the strong presence of Eastern European and Russian emigres artists, many of whom were Jewish, who were drawn to the city for the unrivalled opportunities and freedoms it presented, such that Chagall called Paris the ‘lumiere liberte’. Paris thereby became the centre of intense and productive inter-cultural exchange. The term was first used in the 1920s to highlight a set of artists who were working independently of contemporary avant-garde movements such as Orphism, Purism and Surrealism. The artists were praised for their passionate commitment to their artistic vision, their spirit of certainty, verve and vigour - in Andre Salmon’s words, theirs was ‘L’art vivant et l’art independent’. They won considerable support from patrons, such as the Steins and dealers such as Kahnweiler, Zborowski, Rosenberg and Weill. The figures of the School of Paris can be seen concentrated in various bohemian sites throughout the city - studio complexes, cafes, bars and clubs – predominantly in Montmartre before the First World War and in Montparnasse on the Left Bank, in the 1920s and 1930s. Many future School of Paris artists for example could be found before the War in the Bateau-Lavoir group around Pablo Picasso , including Dongen_Kees van , Juan Gris, Marie Laurencin and the poet Guillaume Apolinaire or in the studio complex of La Ruche on the outskirts of Montparnasse, which housed Chagall, Chaim Soutine, Fernand Leger, Jacques Lipchitz, Ossip Zadkine and Alexander Archipenko amongst other cultural luminaries. After the upheavals of the First World War, many of these artists re-grouped, particularly in Montparnasse, on the Left Bank around Modigliani (until his untimely death in 1920), Moise Kisling, Chagall (on his return to Paris in 1923) and Tsuguharu Foujita. Many of the artists of the School of Paris are associated by their personas – fitting romantic notions of the bohemian artist – self-taught, leading dissolute life-styles but obsessive in their creativity. This can be said of Modigliani, Suzanne Valadon and her son Maurice Utrillo , Pascin and Soutine. School of Paris art was predominantly figurative and expressive: the emphasis was on the experience of the immediate world around them and re-evoking this directly through paint. The artists often took the people and places of the School of Paris as subjects for their painting – for example Modigliani’s portraits of patrons, artists and writers; Utrillo’s scenes of Montmartre and Chagall’s recurrent use of recognisable symbols of Paris. Many of the School of Paris artists are also marked by a shared interest in the art of so-called ‘primitive’ cultures (particularly Modigliani, Constantin Brancusi and Picasso). In this they sought to create a direct and relevant modern art through inspiration from art that seemed unconstrained by established cultural conventions Despite the creative opportunities offered by Paris during this period, the experience of Jews during this period was not easy - there was a marked increase in anti-semitism after the First World War and from c.1937 the impact of the Nazis was strongly felt in Paris. Many artists left the city, many for New York and this had a profound influence on the cities’ cultural lives. After the Second World War, the centre of the art world decisively shifted to New York.

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