Jules Pascin - Tapa dura

Julius Mordecai Pincas (1885-1930) was a Bulgarian who set out on a wild and adventurous journey to Vienna, the Habsburg capital. After art school, he set off for Munich and Berlin before settling down in Paris in 1905 and painting under the name of Pascin. Over 1907 to 1930, Pascin exhibited in Berlin, Paris, New York at fairs such as the 1911 Berlin Secession en 1911 and the 1913 Independants and Autumn salons as well as at Bernheim and other leading private galleries. Indeed, he spent most of his time travelling Algeria, Cuba, Portugal, Spain, Tunisia and the USA where he took out citizenship in 1920. He hanged himself on June 2, 1930, only a year before major retrospective exhibitions of his works in New York and Paris. Today, Pascin still stands out as a ""bad boy."" His canvasses are as turbulent as his lifestyle, full of parties and places the affluent patronize but never mention in polite society - those brothels and cabarets where slightly clad ladies hosted the pillars of the community. Pascin was as brilliant at the easel as the drawing board but is all too easily overlooked, perhaps because he lived in the shadow of contemporaries Picasso, Modigliani and many many more.

In 1885, America had not jet won its Indian Wars and the world was divided between East and West. Vidin, a little Bulgarian city on the banks of the Danube not far from Romanian border lay in the middle. It was here on March 31 that Julius Mordecai Pincas came into the world, the seventh of nine children born to Sophie Pincas nee Russo and Marcus Pincas. His father was rich grain merchant, and both parents were descendants of Sephradic Jews who have lfed the 15th century persecutions of the pious Qyueen Isabella's Spanish Inquisition.