AIX-EN-PROVENCE.- Culturespaces is presenting an exhibition that sheds light on an unexplored dimension of Marc Chagall, who was celebrated as a master of colour by the artists and critics of his day. The exhibition, which is devoted to the last part of the artist’s career, highlights his change of style and reveals each stage in the artist’s creative process, from 1948 until his death in 1985.

130 works (paintings, drawings, washes, gouaches, collages, sculptures and ceramics) reflect Chagall’s exploration of black and white and his subsequent mastery of particularly luminous, intense, and profound tints.

A RENEWED AND UNIQUE APPROACH TO WORKING WITH COLOUR
Although Marc Chagall was considered a master of colour by the artists and critics of his day, they were less familiar with another approach he adopted—the constant dialogue in his oeuvre between colour and black and white—, which was a decisive phase in the renewal of his art at the turn of the 1950s.

This dialogue emerged in the works dating from the 1920s and ‘30s, in which the mastery of colour, which was already present in the young artist’s oeuvre, anticipated and inspired the conception of black and white drawings and engravings. In the post-war period, the colour black—with its impenetrable and overpowering expressiveness—became the catalyst for sombre memories, as well as the aspirations of a Europe that was undergoing reconstruction. Ever in tune with his times, Chagall inverted the creative process and adopted a bold approach, which, from the exploration of the luminous and formal subtleties of black and white, led him to develop even brighter and more intense chromatic tonalities. Furthermore, his experience in creating monumental pictorial spaces, which he had worked on in the United States, thanks to commissions for ballet stage sets and costumes, inspired a renewed interest in colour, which was perceived as an element in constructing volumes and spaces.

A RANGE OF TECHNIQUES USED IN HIS WORK
This exhibition invites visitors to explore this fascinating process, which manifested itself in the great diversity of techniques used by the artist during this period, upon his return from his exile in America (1941–1947). The techniques ranged from washes to gouaches, engraving to painting, and sculptures made from marble, plaster, and bronze, and ceramic objects.

The exhibition brings together works loaned exceptionally for the event—The Harlequin from the Taisei Corporation in Tokyo and Lovers on the Stake from the Odermatt Collection—and presents works from private collections that have rarely been exhibited in Europe.

Some of the collages in the exhibition, which were discovered in the artist’s studio after his death—such as Sketch for The Concert, Sketch for Le clown rouge devant St-Paul, and Sketch for Opera Figures—, have never been exhibited.

The major works in oils executed in the years 1968–1971 (The Harlequin, Mauve Nude, and The Fantastic Village) are being presented with their preparatory sketches and collages for the first time.

These were the many facets of a complete oeuvre, in which the artist’s comprehension of contrasts, tonalities, chiaroscuro, light, shadows, and halftones produced bold, vivid, and monumental works in colour.

After the Turner and Nicolas de Staël exhibitions, colour is once again be a central theme in Aix-en-Provence, in an exhibition devoted to Marc Chagall’s rich and poetic oeuvre. A unique artist, Chagall created a vocabulary of unique forms, which never fails to enchant visitors at each exhibition devoted to his work—to the point where people might think that they have seen all his work. However, this exhibition in Aix-en-Provence gives visitors an opportunity to discover an entirely novel facet of Chagall’s work, thanks to the two curators’ fresh insight into his ‘late’ works, which have until now rarely been exhibited.

In the second half of his career—when Chagall, like many artists of his generation, settled in the South of France—, he focused on sculpture and ceramics for the first time. Chagall had much to learn from the potters in Provence—as he did from the master glass artisans in Reims—with regard to the various techniques of the fire arts. The stained-glass windows, the ballet and opera stage sets and costumes, and the monumental frescos—such as the famous ceiling in the Opéra Garnier—originated from this large multidisciplinary laboratory, based on a constant improvement and renewal of colour, the primary element in his art. However, the washes, plasters, bronzes, collages, and ceramics exhibited alongside his masterpiece paintings show visitors the extent to which his interest in colour drew its inspiration from a comprehensive study of the graphic, luminous, and sculptural properties of black and white. This fascinating dialogue—between the materials, the techniques, and, above all, black and white—is a core element of our exhibition.

The texts in the exhibition catalogue also focus on the periods that Chagall spent in Russia and America, showing the diverse cultural sources of this cosmopolitan artist, who was always in step with the art of his time. Hence, visitors can readily recognise elements of icon painting, American abstract expressionism, the works by Rouault, Matisse, and Dubuffet, and, a little later, the acid colours of the pop art years in his brightly coloured mature works.

The benevolence of many private and institutional lenders, in France and abroad, has made it possible to bring together this completely unprecedented collection of works in Aix-en-Provence.