Jules Pascin
Das Frühstück, 1923

Alfred Flechtheim and Jules Pascin

Like Flechtheim himself, the painter and graphic artist Julius Pincas, known as Jules Pascin, came from a Jewish family of grain merchants. Between 1902 and 1905, Pascin, who came from Vidin in Bulgaria, attended various academies and schools in Budapest, Berlin, Munich and Vienna. In 1905 he adopted the name Pascin – an anagram of Pincas, and made drawings for the Munich-based satirical magazine ‘Simplicissimus’. It was here that he became acquainted with Albert Weisgerber, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Hans Purrmann, Willy Geiger and Max Slevogt, with whom he remained in contact all his life. That same year he went to Paris and frequented the Café du Dôme. In 1907 he met the artist Hermine Lionette Cartan David (1886–1970), with whom he emigrated to the USA in 1914. He taught at the Telfair Academy in Savannah, Georgia, and became an American citizen, endorsed by Alfred Stieglitz and Maurice Sterne. The two artists, who had since married, returned to Paris in 1920. Pascin then fell in love with Lucy Krohg, the wife of the Norwegian artist.

Pascin, who had long suffered from depression, hanged himself in his Paris flat in 1930. On the day he of his funeral, all galleries in Paris remained closed and thousands – including waitors and barmaids from the restaurants and salons he frequented – accompanied his coffin from the Boulevard de Clichy where he had his studio to Montparnasse Cemetery.

In 1910, Cassirer commissioned Pascin to illustrate Heinrich Heine’s work 'From the Memoirs of Herr Schnabelewopski'. He was represented at exhibitions at the Berlin Secession, the Sonderbundschau in Cologne and the legendary Armory Show in New York. He exhibited his works at Berthe Weill, Georges Bernheim, Pierre Loeb and the Galerie Pierre in Paris, as well as at Alfred Flechtheim’s galleries in Düsseldorf and Berlin. In 1929 Pascin signed an agreement with the Galerie Bernheim, Jeune & Cie., Paris. He made drawings of his surroundings and contemporaries in Munich, Paris and New York, focussing his attention in particular on Montmartre. He captured everything in quick sketches which he often coloured. These were eagerly sought-after and easy to sell. With the money he earned Pascin financed his legendary invitations and soirées, about which Ernest Hemingway wrote in his memoirs. Pascin divided his œuvre between his wife and lover, Lucy Krohg, who opened the Galerie Lucy Krohg in Paris in 1932.