Jules Pascin

Jules Pascin (1885-1930), born Julius Mordecai Pincas, also known as the "Prince of Montparnasse", was a Bulgarian artist of the School of Paris. He later became an American citizen. His most frequent subject was women, depicted in casual poses, usually nude or partly dressed.

Pascin was educated in Vienna and Munich. In December 1905, he moved to Paris, becoming part of the great migration of artists to that city at the start of the 20th century. There he was welcomed by "Les Dômiers" the regular customers of Cafe le Dome. The Dômiers introduced Pascin to Hermine David in 1907. She was also a painter and at the time a student in the Académie Julian and student of Jean-Paul Laurens. The two became lovers. In that same year Pascin had his first solo exhibition at Paul Cassirer Gallery in Berlin. Pascin created thousands of watercolours and sketches, plus drawings and caricatures that he sold to various newspapers and magazines. 

Pascin relocated to London at the outbreak of World War I to avoid service in the Bulgarian army and left for the United States on October 3, 1914. On October 31, Hermine David sailed for the United States to join him. In 1918 Pascin married Hermine David at City Hall in New York City.

In September 1920, Pascin became a naturalised United States citizen, but returned to Paris soon afterward. There he began a relationship with Lucy Vidil Krohg, who had been his lover ten years earlier but had married the Norwegian painter Per Krohg during Pascin's years in America.

Especially after he returned to France, he became the symbol of the Montparnasse artistic community and is more associated with France than the United States. 

In post-World War I Paris, Montparnasse was a euphoric meeting place for the artistic world. Artist Fernand Léger wrote of that period: "man...relaxes and recaptures his taste for life, his frenzy to dance, to spend money...an explosion of life-force fills the world."

They came to Montparnasse from all over the globe - from Europe, including Russia, Hungary and Ukraine, from the United States, Canada, Mexico, Central and South America, and from as far away as Japan. Manuel Ortiz de Zárate, Camilo Mori and others made their way from Chile where the profound innovations in art spawned the formation of the Grupo Montparnasse in Santiago. A few of the other artists who gathered in Montparnasse were Jacob Macznik, Pablo Picasso, Guillaume Apollinaire, Ossip Zadkine, Julio Gonzalez, Moise Kisling, Jean Cocteau, Erik Satie, Marios Varvoglis, Marc Chagall, Nina Hamnett, Jean Rhys, Fernand Léger, Jacques Lipchitz, Max Jacob, Blaise Cendrars, Chaïm Soutine, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Yitzhak Frenkel Frenel, Michel Kikoine, Pinchus Kremegne, Amedeo Modigliani, Ford Madox Ford, Toño Salazar, Ezra Pound, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Suzanne Duchamp-Crotti, Henri Rousseau, Constantin Brâncuși, Eva Kotchever, Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, Paul Fort, Juan Gris, Diego Rivera, Federico Cantú, Angel Zarraga, Marevna, Tsuguharu Foujita, Marie Vassilieff, Léon-Paul Fargue, Alberto Giacometti, René Iché, André Breton, Alfonso Reyes, Pascin, Nils Dardel, Salvador Dalí, Henry Miller, Samuel Beckett, Emil Cioran, Reginald Gray, Endre Ady, Joan Miró, Hilaire Hiler and, in his declining years, Edgar Degas.

Having struggled with depression and alcoholism, Pascin died by suicide at the age of 45.