In 1939, reviewing a Chaïm Soutine show in New York, Newsweek called the painter the “Van Gogh of our time.” No wonder. Like Van Gogh, he astonishes us with the way his art probes the depths of the human psyche yet maintains a beautiful discipline and organization. Soutine revealed furies with a formalism that suits the gilded picture frames generally used for his work. His butchered cow carcasses, however gruesome, have a certain elegance. His landscapes seem hit by tornadoes yet possess balance and grace. His bellboys and waitresses are both diminished in their servility and ennobled by the force of their powerful humanness. The seeming abandon with which he used his loaded brush is plain to see in this retrospective exhibition at the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, in Düsseldorf. —Nicholas Fox Weber