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Press contacts: Anne Scher
or Alex Wittenberg 212.423.3271 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE MARC CHAGALL: EARLY WORKS FROM RUSSIAN COLLECTIONS EXHIBITION PRESENTS MANY WORKS This spring, The Jewish Museum will present an exhibition of early works by Marc Chagall (1887-1985), created in Russia between 1908 and 1920. Marc Chagall: Early Works from Russian Collections will feature paintings, drawings and theater murals by Chagall in addition to paintings by Yehuda Pen, Chagall's first teacher and initial artistic influence. On view from April 29 through October 14, 2001, the exhibition will include 56 works by Marc Chagall including paintings, drawings, and Chagall's murals for the State Jewish Chamber Theater in Moscow. Also on view will be nine paintings by Yehuda Pen, the first Jewish artist in the Pale of Settlement (the territory between the Black Sea and Vilnius, and from Minsk to Warsaw) to attend the Imperial Academy of Art in St. Petersburg, which will help visitors understand the sources and influences that shaped Marc Chagall's work. With the exception of the theater murals, the works in the exhibition have not been exhibited before in the United States. Marc Chagall: Early Works from Russian Collections is made possible by Dresdner Bank and is also sponsored by Delta Airlines with support from other generous donors. Highlights of the exhibition include: Lovers in Blue, 1914, which shows the artist with Bella Rosenfeld, who would become his wife, enveloped in a blue haze that binds them together, and is one of many paintings in Chagall's lyrical lovers' cycle. Jew in Bright Red, 1915, was motivated by the artist's chance encounter with a Vitebsk beggar. For Chagall, this individual evoked the spirituality of migrant rabbis and holy men who were prevalent in the life of Russia's Hasidic community. In The Promenade, 1917-18, the artist grasps the floating, weightless Bella by her hand as she flutters in the wind, binding her to the ground. In the other hand he holds a small bird, a reference to Maurice Maeterlinck's play The Blue Bird, an allegorical fantasy that portrays a hero and heroine who find true love not in their travels, but when they return to their simple home. The Apparition, 1917-18, is one of Chagall's last major paintings in Vitebsk. According to the artist, it was connected to the memory of a dream which he had during his difficult student years in St. Petersburg. Over the Town, 1914-18, was painted when Chagall and Bella had been married for more than a year. A palpable love lifts them to the sky above Vitebsk yet the floating lovers, their bodies melded in union, remain anchored to the old city below, with its cathedral and wooden huts along the banks of the Dvina. The use of geometric forms rivals some of Chagall's pioneering avant-garde Russian contemporaries. Three years following his marriage, Chagall painted The Wedding, 1918. An angel above the heads of the couple foretells the birth of their baby (two years before the date of the painting), who has been drawn on the cheek of the bride, while the fiddler and house symbolize their wedded state. Chagall's Self-Portrait at the Easel, 1914, painted following his return to Vitebsk to Paris, reveals his introspective nature and reflects the process of the artist coming to terms with himself and his roots. The murals, which Chagall created in 1920 for the State Jewish Chamber Theater in Moscow, one of the most important theater groups of the period, will be shown in the context of the artist's early years in Russia. They will be presented as part of a continuum beginning with Chagall's earliest works done in his hometown of Vitebsk, which focus on his family and the environs, and end with the theater murals, his last work before leaving Russia. Chagall considered the richly crafted murals to be his personal masterpieces, expressing all he wished to say as an artist and actively relating his ideas on the development of a national Jewish theater. The work Introduction to the Jewish Theater, 1920, features the artist, himself, located within circus-like rings. Through four additional murals that represent music, dance, drama, and literature, Chagall further developed this topic. With the figure of a fiddler at a wedding in Music (1920), Chagall reused a thematic subject he explored repeatedly from 1908 through the 1920s. Marc Chagall's artistic odyssey of 1907 to 1922 took him from Vitebsk, his hometown in the Russian Pale of Settlement, to the art centers of St. Petersburg and Paris, and in 1914 back to Russia, where he was forced to remain due to the outbreak of World War I and through the early years following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution until his final departure in 1922. From his experiences over these fifteen years, Chagall developed the original visual vocabulary that became deeply embedded in his psyche. The 110-page exhibition catalogue, published by The Jewish Museum, New York, and Third Millennium Publishing Limited, London, will be available in the Museum's Cooper Shop for $19.95 (paperback). It includes 79 color and 28 black and white illustrations as well as essays by Susan Tumarkin Goodman, Senior Curator-at-Large at The Jewish Museum, and curator of the exhibition; Evgenia Petrova, Vice Director at The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg; and Aleksandra Shatskikh, Senior Fellow Researcher at the State Institute of Art Studies, Moscow. Marc Chagall: Early Works from Russian Collections is made possible through the lead sponsorship of Dresdner Bank, and the supporting sponsorship of Delta Air Lines.
The Jewish Museum is located at 1109 Fifth Avenue at 92nd Street, Manhattan. For general information, the public may call 212.423.3200, or visit The Jewish Museum's Web site at http://www.thejewishmuseum.org. |