Marc Chagall was born in
Vitebsk,
Byelorussia
,
in 1887 to a poor Hassidic family. The eldest of nine children, Marc Chagall
studied first in a heder before moving to a secular
Russian school, where he began to display his artistic talent. With his
mother's support, and despite his father's disapproval, Chagall pursued his
interest in art, going to
St.
Petersburg in 1907 to study art with Leon Bakst. Influenced by contemporary Russian painting,
Chagall's distinctive, child-like style, often centering
on images from his childhood, began to emerge. From 1910 to 1914, Marc Chagall
lived in
Paris,
and there absorbed the works of the leading cubist, surrealist, and fauvist
painters. It was during this period that Chagall painted some of his most
famous paintings of the Jewish shtetl or village, and
developed the features that became recognizable trademarks of his art. Strong
and often bright colors portray the world with a
dreamlike, non-realistic simplicity, and the fusion of fantasy, religion, and
nostalgia infuses his work with a joyous quality. Animals, workmen, lovers, and
musicians populate his figures; the "fiddler on the roof" recurs
frequently, often hovering within another scene. Chagall's work of this period
displays the influence of contemporary French painting, but his style remains
independent of any one school of art. He exhibited regularly in the Salon des Independants.
In 1914, before the outbreak of World War I, Marc Chagall held a one-man
show in
Berlin,
exhibiting work dominated by Jewish images and personages. During the war, he
resided in
Russia, and in
1917, endorsing the revolution, he was appointed
Commissar for Fine Arts in
Vitebsk and then director of the
newly established Free Academy of Art. The Bolshevik authorities, however,
frowned upon Chagall's style of art as too modern, and in 1922, Marc Chagall
left Russia, settling in
France
one year later. He lived there permanently except for the years 1941 - 1948
when, fleeing France during
World War II, he resided in the
United
States
. Chagall's horror over the Nazi rise
to power is expressed in works depicting Jewish martyrs and Jewish refugees.
In addition to images of the Hassidic world, Chagall's paintings are inspired
by themes from the Bible. His fascination with the Bible culminated in a series
of over 100 etchings illustrating the Bible, many of which incorporate elements
from Jewish folklore and from religious life in
Vitebsk. Chagall's
other illustrations include works by Gogol, La
Fontaine, Y. L. Peretz, and his autobiographical Ma
Vie (1931; My Life 1960) and Chagall by Chagall (1979).
Marc Chagall painted with a variety of media, such as oils, water colors, and gouaches. His work also expanded to other forms
of art, including ceramics, mosaics, and stained glass. Among his most famous
building decorations are the ceiling of the Opera House in
Paris,
murals at the New York Metropolitan Opera, a glass window at the United
Nations, and decorations at the
Vatican
.
Israel, which Marc Chagall first
visited in 1931 for the opening of the
Tel
Aviv
Art
Museum, is likewise endowed with some of Chagall's work, most
notably the twelve stained glass windows at
Hadassah
Hospital
and wall decorations at the Knesset.
Marc Chagall received many prizes and much recognition for his work. He was also
one of very few artists to exhibit work at the Louvre
in their lifetime.
Marc Chagall’s involvement with printmaking dates to 1922 and his return to
Berlin after World War
I. In the course of trying to recover the paintings he had left behind with
Sturm Gallery’s director Herwarth Walden in 1914,
Walter Feilchenfeldt, the director of the Cassirer Gallery, offered to publish Chagall’s then
recently completed autobiography Mein Leiben (My Life) to be illustrated with etchings. Although
the book was never published due to translation problems, a suite of 20
etchings was created by the artist in the medium of dry-point etching depicting
scenes and figures in Chagall’s newly evolved naïve-realistic style. Chagall
had never before been introduced to printmaking techniques and became very enamored with them, trying his hand with woodcuts and
lithography, too. He felt that in these mediums his narrative flair had found
its proper expression. Chagall wrote in 1960, "Since I started using a
pencil, I have sought for this certain something that could spread like a
stream toward unknown and alluring shores." And again, "When I held a
lithographic stone or a copperplate in my hand I thought I was touching a
talisman. It seemed to me that I could put all my joys and sorrows in
it....Everything that touched my life through the years, births, deaths,
weddings, flowers, animals, birds, the poor workers, my parents, lovers in the
night, the biblical prophets, on the street, at home, in the temple and in
heaven. And as I grew older, the tragedy of life within us and around
us."1 It is in this sense that Chagall did lithographs, and they have
become the stream that carries the message of his painting into the wide world.
Fortuitously, it was a printmaking commission that brought Marc Chagall back to
Paris in 1923. The famous
dealer and editor, Ambroise Vollard,
invited him to do some book illustrations and the artist requested the book be
the Russian author Gogol’s the Dead Souls. So it was
that Marc Chagall engraved 107 etchings on this theme in the course of only two
years. Although in style they are related to the Mein
Leiben dry-points, their technique is obviously more
elaborate and refined. Indicative of how the various creative mediums are
related, the artist found that in the process of developing engraved imagery to
illustrate Gogol he was able to revive his own
Russian themes. As he had been longing to surround himself with the paintings
he had lost in the course of WWI and his sojourn in
Russia
, he seized upon this
inspiration to reconstruct many of his earlier missing canvasses. Other themes
also evolved that were connected to his more recent
Moscow theatre and mural experience. After
his return Chagall viewed
Paris
and the French countryside with fresh eyes and this too was reflected in his
paintings. His colors, moderated by the special light
of
Provence,
became more delicate although still laid on richly and spontaneously. He began
to paint both the French landscape and floral bouquets accompanied by loving
couples, musicians and animals—often depicted around the edges of the
composition like poetic interpolations. These themes would continue to pervade
his mature work through the end of his career.
In 1928-31, Marc Chagall produced a series of black and white etchings inspired
by the La Fontaine’s Fables, also published by Vollard,
who became Chagall’s mentor and source of inspiration with his concepts for
print projects. In these works the artist employed every conceivable etching
technique in an effort to bestow upon them a painterly quality. At roughly the
same time, Vollard had the vision to commission from
Chagall a series of gouache paintings based on circus imagery. These two
projects stirred the fertile imagination of Marc Chagall and he spawned amazing
imagery that influenced many of his later works. This was a happy, busy time
for Chagall. He was able to enjoy the lifestyle of a successful artist in the
French
City
of Light and this was reflected in festive, elegant and romantic compositions
he painted often portraying his wife, Bella and himself. In the early 1930’s
the economic and political crisis that beset
Europe
also had its effect upon Chagall. Nazi persecution of the Jews made the artist
more aware of his own Jewish roots and caused him to long for a more serious
type of artistic expression of deeper significance to the human condition. Vollard’s 1931 commission of 100 etchings depicting the
Bible coincided perfectly with the artist’s mood and he responded immediately
by travelling to the
Holy Land to absorb the
setting of the Old Testament. There he was moved by the solemn beauty of the
area and its splendid light as he began work on a project and a body of images that
would continue to play a major role in his future work. This commission marked
the beginning of the religious side of the artist’s work. At the outset of WWII
which nearly coincided with Ambroise Vollard’s death in an automobile accident, two-thirds of
the plates were completed with most of the balance already started. In this
same period of time Chagall had traveled to Spain in 1934 to study the works of Velazquez,
Goya and El Greco, and in 1937 he journeyed to
Italy
to contemplate the works of
Titian. From these pilgrimages he derived the concept of painting on a larger
scale, with a more diverse color palette and a
greater depth of meaning.
During WWII Marc Chagall was reluctant to leave his adopted home of
France
.
In 1940 he moved to Gordes in
Provence in the
hope of simply being left alone to paint. That winter he was contacted by
Varian Fry of the American Aid Committee and received the invitation of the
Museum of
Modern Art
in
New York City to come to the
United States
.
At first he declined but as news reached him of the arrests and disappearance
of friends he decided to accept this invitation. With Bella, their daughter Ida
and as many of his paintings as possible they made their way to
Marseilles then
Lisbon
finally embarking for the
U.S.
They arrived in
New York on June 23, 1941 one
day after Nazi troops marched into
Russia
the home of Chagall’s
childhood. Cut off from his normal routine Chagall devoted himself to his
painting at first in
New York City,
but as soon as possible he and his family relocated to the countryside. There
tragically his beloved wife Bella took ill with pneumonia and died leaving Marc
and Ida alone and brokenhearted.
After Bella’s death, in an effort to proceed with his work, Chagall began to
produce his first color lithographs Four Tales from
The Arabian Nights. From the 1,001 stories in The Arabian Nights, Chagall chose
just a few which deal with themes of lost love, reunion and death creating a
total of 13 compositions. The combination of these exotic tales of fantasy and
the vivid color and imagery of Marc Chagall proved to
be an intoxicating blend. Although he had created black and white lithographs
earlier in
France
,
Chagall, who is widely considered to be among the greatest colorists
of all time, had never tried his hand at color
lithography. The spectacular results published in 1948 confirm the artist’s
affinity for the medium. Chagall’s Four Tales from The Arabian Nights are
considered to be the finest examples of color
lithography produced in the
United
States
prior to 1950, and he was honored in 1948 by being awarded the graphic prize of the
Venice Biennial.
Following a comprehensive exhibition of his work at the Musee
National d’Art Moderne,
Paris in the spring of 1946, Chagall moved permanently back to France in 1948 settling in Vence near Nice and
the
Cote d’Azur
by 1950. Soon after his return Chagall met with Teriade
(1897-1983) the editor of Verve and heir to Vollard,
who began to publish in rapid succession the Chagall projects remaining in Vollard’s estate: Dead Souls in 1948, La Fontaine’s Fables
in 1952, The Bible (the balance of which had been completed between 1952-56) in
1957. Most significantly of all in 1952 as the artist was about to remarry, Teriade commissioned Chagall to illustrate the ancient
pastoral romance Daphnis and Chloe.
With Daphnis and Chloe (M. 308-349) Marc Chagall embarked upon a new cycle of
life and work. Together with his new bride, Vava, and
literally on their honeymoon, he travelled for the first time in his life to
Greece
to seek inspiration for this adventurous tale. In Delphi,
Athens
and on the
island of
Poros, Marc and Vava fell in love with
Greece
and the story of Daphnis and
Chloe. At that time and in a series of later visits to
Greece
, Chagall created a series of
drawings and gouaches which formed the basis for the 42 color
lithographs which comprise the Daphnis and Chloe suite. As published by Teriade in 1961 in the deluxe edition of only 60 they are
universally accepted as the artist’s most important original prints (it should be
noted that an unsigned book state of 250 also exists). These remarkable works
were engraved by Marc Chagall under the watchful eye of the master printer
Charles Sorlier and printed on the presses of the
incomparable Mourlot workshop in
Paris between 1957 and 1960. Chagall’s color lithographs for Daphnis and Chloe set a new standard
for excellence in this medium that may never be equalled. Abandoning the
traditional practice of first producing a black stone or drawing stone which
outlines most of the composition and reduces the subsequent color
plates to merely adding detail, Chagall chose to create lithograph compositions
completely from pure color just as he would a
painting. In 1958 Chagall was commissioned by the Paris Opera to create set
designs and costumes for the ballet Daphnis and Chloe by Ravel, thereby
bringing to life this classic story and paralleling his original prints on the
same theme. His work with the ballet and its dancers clearly influenced the
grace and beauty of the movement of the figures portrayed in the lithographs as
well.
Henceforth, Chagall continued to be fascinated with color
lithography as a printmaking medium and retained the Mourlot
atelier and especially Charles Sorlier as his
creative collaborators. Sorlier advised him on all
his future color lithograph projects and supervised
their printing at Mourlot. "Marc Chagall
fabricated a mystical world of lovers, musicians and artists in his work. He
chose lithography as a print medium that could offer him almost unlimited
painterly freedom to explore this world. Since lithography is a technique where
the artist can work directly on the printing plate or lithostone,
the resultant prints convey the spontaneity of his brushstrokes and drawn
lines. Lithography also allowed Chagall to work in lush color,
which he viewed as his métier, and for which he has
become renowned. Chagall’s lithographs are now among the most collected art
works of the 20th century."2
Following his triumphant Daphnis and Chloe suite, Chagall produced such
individual masterpieces in color lithography as The
Bay of Angels (M. 350) and Quai de la Tournelle (M. 351). In 1962, encouraged by Teriade, he began work on another project that was first
conceived by Ambroise Vollard,
The Circus suite (M. 490-527). Vollard had been an
enthusiastic fan of the circus and realized the potential of its lights,
costumes and performers as stimulus for Chagall imagery. He had therefore, as
we have already noted, commissioned the artist to paint a series of circus
gouaches in the late 1920’s. Employing these gouaches as a point of departure,
Chagall now engraved 23 masterful color lithographs
and 15 lyrical black and white lithographs on the circus theme. The color examples alone were published in 1967 by Teriade in a deluxe edition of only 24 and three artist’s
proofs, and rank with the Daphnis and Chloe color
lithographs as the artist’s finest and most collectable. Chagall composed his
own text for the book state of these works which were published along with the
black and white examples as a true artists’ book in an unsigned edition of 250.
Chagall’s colorful circus imagery is pure delight and
speaks to the child within us all, but upon closer examination the viewer
discovers in addition to the clowns, acrobats and equestrians unexpected but
typical Chagall iconography such as his bridal couples, musicians and his
ubiquitous chickens and goats which add to the fun. Yet for the artist the
circus was a somewhat melancholy visual metaphor for life. "For me the
circus is a magic spectacle which passes by like the affairs of the world and
melts. There is an unsettling and a profound circus."3
Even with the enormous success of the color
lithography he had already achieved Marc Chagall was still eager to experiment
with the possibilities and limitations of this printmaking medium. Unusual
formatted tableauxs such as the oval shaped The
Golden Age (M. 542) and grand scale subjects like The Magician of Paris II of
the late 1960’s viewed in this exhibition are superb examples that added new
excitement to his printmaking oeuvre. For his final body of lithography based
upon a single theme Chagall chose Homer’s Odyssey (M. 749-830) executing 82
lithographs, 43 of them in color based upon this
epic. The Odyssey was published by Mourlot
in two volumes in the mid-1970’s. Marc Chagall’s enthusiasm for color lithography was such that in 1980 Aime
Maeght was able to induce the artist, then 93 years
old, to engrave his largest color lithographs ever
(M. 971-984) simply by
informing him
that he had obtained some large sized lithostones. Maeght had hoped that the artist would be sufficiently
interested to engrave one or two new compositions; instead Chagall summoned his
energy and talent to engrave 13 outstanding color
lithographs including: Couple at Dusk (M. 972), In the Sky of the Opera (M.
973), The Parade (M. 981) and Red Maternity (M. 984) each measuring on average
95 x 60 cm. (37 5/8 x 23 7/8 inches). Together they constitute a complete
compendium of his most recognizable imagery including loving couples, floral
bouquets, floating figures, circus performers and the familiar landscapes of
Paris, St. Paul de Vence and
Vitebsk all presented in a
monumental size.
Mrc Chagall was 63 years old when he first came to Mourlot
in 1950 to study in earnest the technique of color
lithography with Charles Sorlier. Already a world
famous artist with nothing to prove, Chagall
nevertheless worked tirelessly to master the many nuances and subtleties of
this demanding medium for his own satisfaction. As the majority of his works in
lithography were created late in his career the character of the work produced
took on that of a dialogue between the artist and his earlier inventions,
giving his lithographs the advantage of drawing upon a rich and personal
iconography developed over a lifetime. It is not surprising therefore that
these color lithographs are so endearing to those of
us whose heart and soul are touched by the message of Marc Chagall. Marc
Chagall died on March 28th, 1985, in
Saint-Paul
Russia
.
James Healy, San Francisco 2002
