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June 24,2007-July 1,2007 |
Marc Chagall in Livorno
Tuscan city showcases Russian artist's work
Originally Published: 2007-06-10
The Tuscan city of Livorno is showcasing the etchings and prints of Russian master Marc Chagall.
The exhibition runs at Livorno's Centro Arte Guastalla gallery until June 24 and features 80 beautiful works. The works come from Chagall's three monumental etching sets. These were commissioned by French art dealer and publisher Ambroise Vollard in the 1920s and '30s, when the Russian was at the peak of his powers.
“In his etchings, Chagall could not use the blues, reds and purples that made his painting distinctive,” organizers said. “So he entrusted himself totally to swift, nervous strokes made with the skill and innovation of a genius.”
Vollard commissioned the first of the sets in 1923 to illustrate an edition of Dead Souls, the classic novel by Russian-Ukrainian writer Nikolai Gogol. The publisher was so satisfied with the results that he then got Chagall to illustrate the fables of French poet Jean de La Fontaine. La Fontaine's 240 fanciful poems were the perfect springboard for Chagall's imagination. Like La Fontaine, Chagall loved rural life, populated his works with animals and gave them a dream-like feel. Some of these works were subsequently completed by Chagall with the meticulous application of watercolours by hand. Prints from Chagall's set of 100 black and white etchings illustrating the Bible are on display in Livorno too.
Chagall (1887-1985) was involved in modern art movements like Cubism and Fauvism but he stayed at the margins, assimilating the developments into his own unique style.
He grew up the eldest of nine children in a poor Russian Jewish family in Vitebsk, a town in present day Belarus. Throughout his long career the artist drew inspiration from his Jewish heritage and from Vitebsk folk-life, transmitting the zest and child-like wonder he first experienced it with.
After the Russian Revolution, Chagall did not thrive in his post as a Soviet Culture Ministry art commissioner and moved back to Paris in 1923. He escaped the Holocaust thanks to an American journalist who helped him get out of Nazi-occupied France and reach the United States in 1941. He returned to Europe in 1946 and settled in the south of France three years later. He died in the town of Saint-Paul de Vence aged 97 in 1985.
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