LITHOGRAPHIES – MARC CHAGALL

PRESS RELEASE

“Composition is, for the artist, a means of arranging the different parts of a work of art into a distinct whole, focusing on what is essential.”

Marc Chagall’s works often give us an impression of spontaneity. People and animals, villages and everyday objects fill the surface as freely and wildly as in dreamscapes.

However, it might surprise us to consider that Chagall himself was not always keen to discuss the subject matter or the narratives conveyed through his images. “The cow and my wife are equal compositional elements in a painting!” he remarked. As a user of these elements, Chagall regarded himself as being more “abstract” than Mondrian or Kandinsky. If Chagall needed an empty space on the canvas where there “should” have been a human head, he would detach the head from the body and place it in a more compositionally suitable location.

Marc Chagall (1889–1985) was a Russian-French painter born into a poor Jewish family in Vitebsk, Belarus. He studied in Vitebsk, Saint Petersburg, and under Léon Bakst. Chagall lived in Paris from 1910 to 1914, where he befriended Apollinaire and the Cubists and participated in the Salon des Indépendants. In Berlin, he exhibited at the Sturm Gallery in 1914.

After returning to Russia, Chagall participated in Moscow’s avant-garde exhibitions, married Bella Rosenfeld in 1915, and was appointed Commissioner of Arts in Vitebsk following the revolution. He co-founded the city’s art academy but resigned in 1919 due to disagreements with Malevich and moved to Moscow, where he created stage designs for the Jewish Theater.

In 1922, Chagall moved to Berlin and, the following year, to Paris. He published his autobiography, Ma Vie, in 1930. From 1941 to 1947, Chagall lived in the United States. Having moved away from Cubism’s influence, Chagall developed a poetic style admired by the Surrealists.

Chagall also created numerous large-scale works, including stained-glass windows (e.g., Hadassah Synagogue in Jerusalem, UN headquarters in New York) and murals (Paris Opera, Metropolitan Opera, Lincoln Art Center, among others).

(Sources: Fokus Taide and Maailman taide)