PASCIN, JULES

born , March 31, 1885, Vidin, Bulg. died June 1, 1930, Paris original name Julius Pincas painter of the school of Paris renowned for his delicate draftsmanship and sensitive studies of women. Born of Italian-Serbian and Spanish-Jewish parents, Pascin spent a number of years in Austria and Germany working for such satirical journals as the Lustige Bltter and Simplicissimus. In 1905 he moved to Paris where he continued to produce tragically satirical drawings of the demimonde. At the outbreak of World War I he travelled for a while in the United States, where he became a citizen, returning to Paris in 1920. There he began to create a series of large-scale, representational, and very sensitively drawn biblical and mythological paintings. Later he turned to the material for which he is generally known, the delicately toned, thinly painted, but poetically bitter and ironic studies of women, generally prostitutes. On the eve of an important one-man show of his work Pascin hanged himself.