Marc Chagall

The Ballet : Ballerina and Faun - Original lithograph - Mourlot #581

1969

Marc Chagall (1887-1985) The Circus : The Spirit of the Circus, 1967 Original lithograph (Mourlot Workshop) On Arches vellum 42 x 32 cm (c. 17 x 13 in) REFERENCE : Catalog raiso...

Marc Chagall (1887-1985) The Bible, The Forbidden Fruit Original lithograph (Mourlot Workshop) On paper 36 x 26.5 cm (c. 14.2 x 10.2 in) Second original lithograph on the back, se...

Marc Chagall (1887-1985) The Circus : Acrobats, Rooster and Horses, 1967 Original lithograph (Mourlot Workshop) On Arches vellum 42 x 32 cm (c. 17 x 13 in) REFERENCE : Catalog r...

Pablo PICASSO Ballet : The Dancer, 1954 Original lithograph Printed signature in the plate Unnumbered On light vellum 31 x 22 cm (c. 12,2 x 8,7 in) REFERENCES : - Catalog raisonne...

Marc Chagall Original Lithograph 1963 Dimensions: 32 x 24 cm As published in Chagall Lithographe 1957-1962. VOLUME II. Unsigned, as issued, from the edition of several thousand Condition : Excellent Reference: Mourlot/Gauss 401 Marc Chagall (born in 1887) Marc Chagall was born in Belarus in 1887 and developed an early interest in art. After studying painting, in 1907 he left Russia for Paris, where he lived in an artist colony on the city’s outskirts. Fusing his own personal, dreamlike imagery with hints of the fauvism and cubism popular in France at the time, Chagall created his most lasting work—including I and the Village (1911)—some of which would be featured in the Salon des Indépendants exhibitions. After returning to Vitebsk for a visit in 1914, the outbreak of WWI trapped Chagall in Russia. He returned to France in 1923 but was forced to flee the country and Nazi persecution during WWII. Finding asylum in the U.S., Chagall became involved in set and costume design before returning to France in 1948. In his later years, he experimented with new art forms and was commissioned to produce numerous large-scale works. Chagall died in St.-Paul-de-Vence in 1985. The Village Marc Chagall was born in a small Hassidic community on the outskirts of Vitebsk, Belarus, on July 7, 1887. His father was a fishmonger, and his mother ran a small sundries shop in the village. As a child, Chagall attended the Jewish elementary school, where he studied Hebrew and the Bible, before later attending the Russian public school. He began to learn the fundamentals of drawing during this time, but perhaps more importantly, he absorbed the world around him, storing away the imagery and themes that would feature largely in most of his later work. At age 19 Chagall enrolled at a private, all-Jewish art school and began his formal education in painting, studying briefly with portrait artist Yehuda Pen. However, he left the school after several months, moving to St. Petersburg in 1907 to study at the Imperial Society for the Protection of Fine Arts. The following year, he enrolled at the Svanseva School, studying with set designer Léon Bakst, whose work had been featured in Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. This early experience would prove important to Chagall’s later career as well. Despite this formal instruction, and the widespread popularity of realism in Russia at the time, Chagall was already establishing his own personal style, which featured a more dreamlike unreality and the people, places and imagery that were close to his heart. Some examples from this period are his Window Vitebsk (1908) and My Fianceé with Black Gloves (1909), which pictured Bella Rosenfeld, to whom he had recently become engaged. The Beehive Despite his romance with Bella, in 1911 an allowance from Russian parliament member and art patron Maxim Binaver enabled Chagall to move to Paris, France. After settling briefly in the Montparnasse neighborhood, Chagall moved further afield to an artist colony known as La Ruche (“The Beehive”), where he began to work side by side with abstract painters such as Amedeo Modigliani and Fernand Léger as well as the avant-garde poet Guillaume Apollinaire. At their urging, and under the influence of the wildly popular fauvism and cubism, Chagall lightened his palette and pushed his style ever further from reality. I and the Village (1911) and Homage to Apollinaire (1912) are among his early Parisian works, widely considered to be his most successful and representative period. Though his work stood stylistically apart from his cubist contemporaries, from 1912 to 1914 Chagall exhibited several paintings at the annual Salon des Indépendants exhibition, where works by the likes of Juan Gris, Marcel Duchamp and Robert Delaunay were causing a stir in the Paris art world. Chagall’s popularity began to spread beyond La Ruche, and in May 1914 he traveled to Berlin to help organize his first solo exhibition, at Der Sturm Gallery. Chagall remained in the city until the highly acclaimed show opened that June. He then returned to Vitebsk, unaware of the fateful events to come. War, Peace and Revolution In August 1914 the outbreak of World War I precluded Chagall’s plans to return to Paris. The conflict did little to stem the flow of his creative output, however, instead merely giving him direct access to the childhood scenes so essential to his work, as seen in paintings such as Jew in Green (1914) and Over Vitebsk (1914). His paintings from this period also occasionally featured images of the war’s impact on the region, as with Wounded Soldier (1914) and Marching (1915). But despite the hardships of life during wartime, this would also prove to be a joyful period for Chagall. In July 1915 he married Bella, and she gave birth to a daughter, Ida, the following year. Their appearance in works such as Birthday (1915), Bella and Ida by the Window (1917) and several of his “Lovers” paintings give a glimpse of the island of domestic bliss that was Chagall’s amidst the chaos. To avoid military service and stay with his new family, Chagall took a position as a clerk in the Ministry of War Economy in St. Petersburg. While there he began work on his autobiography and also immersed himself in the local art scene, befriending novelist Boris Pasternak, among others. He also exhibited his work in the city and soon gained considerable recognition. That notoriety would prove important in the aftermath of the 1917 Russian Revolution when he was appointed as the Commissar of Fine Arts in Vitebsk. In his new post, Chagall undertook various projects in the region, including the 1919 founding of the Academy of the Arts. Despite these endeavors, differences among his colleagues eventually disillusioned Chagall. In 1920 he relinquished his position and moved his family to Moscow, the post-revolution capital of Russia. In Moscow, Chagall was soon commissioned to create sets and costumes for various productions at the Moscow State Yiddish Theater, where he would paint a series of murals titled Introduction to the Jewish Theater as well. In 1921, Chagall also found work as a teacher at a school for war orphans. By 1922, however, Chagall found that his art had fallen out of favor, and seeking new horizons he left Russia for good. Flight After a brief stay in Berlin, where he unsuccessfully sought to recover the work exhibited at Der Sturm before the war, Chagall moved his family to Paris in September 1923. Shortly after their arrival, he was commissioned by art dealer and publisher Ambroise Vollard to produce a series of etchings for a new edition of Nikolai Gogol's 1842 novel Dead Souls. Two years later Chagall began work on an illustrated edition of Jean de la Fontaine’s Fables, and in 1930 he created etchings for an illustrated edition of the Old Testament, for which he traveled to Palestine to conduct research. Chagall’s work during this period brought him new success as an artist and enabled him to travel throughout Europe in the 1930s. He also published his autobiography, My Life (1931), and in 1933 received a retrospective at the Kunsthalle in Basel, Switzerland. But at the same time that Chagall’s popularity was spreading, so, too, was the threat of Fascism and Nazism. Singled out during the cultural "cleansing" undertaken by the Nazis in Germany, Chagall’s work was ordered removed from museums throughout the country. Several pieces were subsequently burned, and others were featured in a 1937 exhibition of “degenerate art” held in Munich. Chagall’s angst regarding these troubling events and the persecution of Jews in general can be seen in his 1938 painting White Crucifixion...

This exquisite lithograph by Marc Chagall (1887–1985), titled Le Jeu des Acrobates (The Game of Acrobats), from the album The Lithographs of Chagall, Volume II, originates from the 1...

This exquisite lithograph by Marc Chagall (1887–1985), titled Daphnis et Chloe (Daphnis and Chloe), from the album XXe Siecle, Nouvelle serie, XXIIe Annee, No. 14, Juin 1960, originates from the 1960 edition published by Societe Internationale d'Art XXe Siecle, Paris, under the direction of Gualtieri di San Lazzaro, editeur, Paris, and printed by Mourlot Freres, Paris, 1960. Daphnis et Chloe reflects Chagall’s poetic fusion of love, mythology, and dreamlike imagery, inspired by the ancient Greek pastoral romance and reimagined through his luminous color harmonies and floating forms. The work embodies Chagall’s timeless exploration of passion, innocence, and the spiritual beauty of nature, rendered in his signature chromatic radiance and lyricism. Executed as a lithograph on velin paper, this work measures 12.5 x 9.75 inches. Unsigned and unnumbered as issued. The edition exemplifies the superb craftsmanship of Mourlot Freres, Paris. Artwork Details: Artist: Marc Chagall (1887–1985) Title: Daphnis et Chloe (Daphnis and Chloe), from the album XXe Siecle, Nouvelle serie, XXIIe Annee, No. 14, Juin 1960 Medium: Lithograph on velin paper Dimensions: 12.5 x 9.75 inches (31.75 x 24.77 cm) Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered as issued Date: 1960 Publisher: Societe Internationale d'Art XXe Siecle, Paris, under the direction of Gualtieri di San Lazzaro, editeur, Paris Printer: Mourlot Freres, Paris Catalogue raisonne reference: Mourlot, Fernand, and Marc Chagall. Chagall Lithographe, Volume II, 1957–1962. Chagall Lithographe, Sauret, 1963, illustration 227 Condition: Well preserved, consistent with age and medium Provenance: From the album XXe Siecle, Nouvelle serie, XXIIe Annee, No. 14, Juin 1960, published by Societe Internationale d'Art XXe Siecle, Paris; printed by Mourlot Freres, Paris, 1960 About the Publication: Gualtieri di San Lazzaro's XXe Siecle (Twentieth Century) was one of the most influential art journals of the modern era, founded in Paris in 1938 as a platform for the greatest painters, sculptors, and writers of the 20th century. San Lazzaro, a visionary editor, critic, and champion of modernism, believed that art and literature should coexist as expressions of a shared human imagination. Under his direction, XXe Siecle became a cultural bridge between Europe and the wider world, publishing special issues devoted to leading figures such as Picasso, Matisse, Chagall, Braque, Calder, Miro, Kandinsky, and Leger. Each edition combined essays by renowned critics and poets with original lithographs and woodcuts printed by the foremost ateliers of Paris, Milan, and New York, including Mourlot, Curwen, and Amilcare Pizzi, creating a uniquely rich dialogue between text and image. The 1960 issue, XXe Siecle, Nouvelle serie, No. 14, showcased Daphnis et Chloe, one of Chagall’s most celebrated lithographic subjects, coinciding with his work on the monumental suite of lithographs inspired by the same pastoral tale, published by Teriade. Through this publication, San Lazzaro further cemented Chagall’s reputation as the modern poet of color and love, uniting myth, nature, and emotion in visual form. Today, XXe Siecle remains an essential record of 20th-century modernism, celebrated for its seamless integration of fine art, literature, and design. About the Artist: Marc Chagall (1887–1985) was a Belarus-born French painter, printmaker, and designer whose visionary imagination, radiant color, and deeply poetic symbolism made him one of the most beloved and influential artists of the 20th century. Rooted in the imagery of his Jewish heritage and the memories of his childhood in Vitebsk, Chagall’s art wove together themes of faith, love, folklore, and fantasy with a dreamlike modern sensibility. His unique style—merging elements of Cubism, Fauvism, Expressionism, and Surrealism—defied categorization, transforming ordinary scenes into lyrical meditations on memory and emotion. Influenced by Russian icon painting, medieval religious art, and the modern innovations of artists such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Georges Braque, Chagall developed a profoundly personal visual language filled with floating figures, vibrant animals, musicians, and lovers that symbolized the transcendent power of imagination and love. During his early years in Paris, he became an integral part of the Ecole de Paris circle, forming friendships with Amedeo Modigliani, Fernand Leger, and Sonia Delaunay, and his creative spirit resonated with that of his peers and successors—Alexander Calder, Alberto Giacometti, Salvador Dali, Joan Miro, Wassily Kandinsky, Marcel Duchamp, and Man Ray—artists who, like Chagall, sought to push the boundaries of perception, emotion, and form. Over a prolific career that spanned painting, printmaking, stained glass, ceramics, and stage design, Chagall brought an unparalleled poetic sensibility to modern art, infusing even the most abstract subjects with human warmth and spiritual depth. His works are held in the most prestigious museums around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Centre Pompidou, the Tate, and the Guggenheim, where they continue to inspire generations of artists and collectors. The highest price ever paid for a Marc Chagall artwork is approximately 28.5 million USD, achieved in 2017 at Sotheby’s New York for Les Amoureux (1928). Marc Chagall Daphnis...

Artist: Marc Chagall Title: Acrobats at Play Portfolio: Mourlot Lithographe II Medium: Lithograph Date: 1963 Edition: Unnumbered Frame Size: 20 3/4" x 17 1/2" Sheet Size: 12 3/4" x 9...