The Gmünder Stadtturm exhibition presents the diversity of Marc Chagall's graphic oeuvre: in addition to sheets from all his major portfolios - the Bible illustrations, Daphnis et Chloé, The Circus, Les ames mortes and Poèmes - selected individual lithographic masterpieces and illustrated books alongside complementary unique pieces impressively demonstrate Marc Chagall's poetic artistic cosmos and present an enraptured, imaginative world that is deeply moving and yet remains mysterious.
Marc Chagall (1887-1985) is one of the most important mavericks of 20th century art. With his unique cosmos of images and his unmistakable colorfulness, Chagall created a highly individual life's work. His breathtaking biography, marked by many upheavals and new beginnings, stretches from his youth in Vitebsk, Belarus, through many years of teaching and creating in Paris, an exciting escape to emigrate to the United States, to a fulfilled and highly productive life in the south of France.
Marc Chagall, 2 sheets from the portfolio "Le Cirque", 1967, lithographs. | © Bildrecht, Vienna 2024.
For the first time in the south of Austria, the exhibition provides an insight into Chagall's rich and colorful prints from an extensive German private collection: around 80 luminous works on paper by Chagall impressively demonstrate his poetic and optimistic pictorial world, which is inspired by the artist's Jewish-Belarusian homeland, stories from the Bible and eloquent literature from ancient Greece. The exhibition is complemented by impressive portrait photographs by artist photographer Edward Quinn, who photographed Chagall several times in his late adopted home of Saint-Paul-de-Vence in the south of France, both on official occasions and during private visits in the intimacy of his private home.
Marc Chagall at the opening of the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, 1964, on the left in the background the work L'Echo (1960) by Georges Braque, Photo Edward Quinn © edwardquinn.com
The laws of gravity seem to be suspended in Chagall's work. His unmistakable creative means include the juxtaposition, togetherness and superimposition of small and large, the anatomically impossible, the almost natural standing on one's head. Space and time seem to be suspended; the artist is concerned with the soul, with the depiction of mental and spiritual states. The use of color follows this idea and often corresponds more to an inner color scheme than to reality. Chagall's characteristic pictorial worlds are defined not least by this radiant, lively and deeply individual coloration. Marc Chagall was a painter and draughtsman, ceramicist and sculptor, he designed stained glass windows, ceiling paintings and mosaics and also left behind a significant oeuvre of prints, which includes almost 1100 lithographs, around 120 etchings and the remarkable number of 114 illustrated books and portfolios, making him one of the most productive artists of the 20th century. Everything that moved Marc Chagall, his origins, his interests and his life experience, can be found in his graphic oeuvre, and so the Gmünd exhibition also offers a journey through the artistic oeuvre of the great maverick of modernism.
May 8 to September 29, 2024
www.künstlerstadt-gmünd.at
