This exhibition focuses on circus people in the work of Marc Chagall, brings together 16 of the artist’s paintings and 36 of his drawings from public and private collections. Some thirty of these works have never been published.
Marc Chagall (1887-1985) painted and drew circus people throughout his career – acrobats, dancers, clowns and musicians. For him they were special artists no doubt emblematic of the Artist in general. Like him, they thrilled their audience, but they did so on stage and with few props. Their art was the model for more scholarly arts and for Chagall, painting, with its artisanal side, is not far removed from the circus arts which seek simply to please and make us dream. But although clowns and acrobats are thus allegorical figures for the Artist, they first and foremost stand for Chagall himself. A kind of self-portrait.
Bringing together major works such as The Acrobat, 1930, Dance, 1950 (Musée national d’Art Moderne, on permanent loan to the Musée National Message Biblique Marc Chagall), Clowns at Night, 1957 (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Saint-Etienne) or Mauve Nude, 1967 (private collection), the exhibition is a journey through the works of Chagall’s “French” period, works that show his unwavering passion for the circus: “I have always seen clowns, acrobats and actors as tragically human beings who, for me, are like the figures in some religious paintings, ” he used to say
