A week from Tuesday, Jerusalem will take its place in the art world when, for the first time in the capital and the country, a painting will be presented for auction with a starting price of more than a million dollars. Lucien Krief, a hareidi-religious painter and sculptor who owns a gallery next to the King David Hotel, told Arutz Sheva's Hebrew news journal on Sunday that the 1918 painting "Flower vase on a chair" by the Jewish expressionist Chaim Soutine has aroused the interest of art collectors from the United States, Russia, Japan and Western Europe.

Krief says that Soutine, who was born in Belarus, was part of a group of poor Paris artists that included Marc Chagall, Amedeo Modigliani, Moise Kisling and others who would distribute their paintings for food. Soutine insisted on portraying pain and crisis in his painting.