Arbit Blatas

1908-1999

Born in Kaunas on 19 November 1908, Arbit Blatas was a precocious talent who began exhibiting in his native country at the age of 15. He left for Paris and, at the age of 21, became the youngest member of the School of Paris.

When Blatas was 24, the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume in Paris first acquired some of his paintings; he had already become a colleague and friend of many of the great figures of the Paris art world, such as Vlaminck, Soutine, Picasso, Utrillo, Braque, Zadkine, Léger and Derain. He was to paint and sculpt them all, as well as Bonnard, Vuillard, Matisse, Dufy, Van Dongen, Cocteau, Marquet and many others. His 30 portraits in oil and bronzes are considered a unique document of the painters and sculptors of that dynamic period in 20th-century French painting..

In the 1930s, Blatas exhibited in London and New York, as well as in his adoptive home of Paris.

Fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe in 1941 for the United States, Blatas became an American citizen. After the war, Blatas divided his life between New York and France; in 1947, he was elected a life member of the Salon d'Automne, in the latter country. His life-size bronze of his colleague and friend Chaim Soutine, created in 1967, was highly admired by André Malraux. In 1987, the City of Paris installed the statue in Montparnasse and conferred on Blatas the Médaille de Vermeil. A life-size statue of another close friend and colleague, Jacques Lipchitz, now stands in the garden of the Hotel de Ville.

In 1978, Arbit Blatas was named Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur by the French Government for his contribution to French art as an outstanding member of the School of Paris, and in 1994 was promoted to the rank of Officier de la Légion d'Honneur.