Poster Marc Chagall - Song of songs III

Marc Chagall - Cantique des cantiques III (1960)
Oil on Paper on Canvas - 149 x 210 cm
Nice - Musée national Marc Chagall

The composition, built on three large round shapes that obviously evoke breasts and a woman's stomach, is also cut in half by a horizon line that delimits two distinct parts. Chagall...

Marc Chagall - Cantique des cantiques III (1960)
Oil on Paper on Canvas - 149 x 210 cm
Nice - Musée national Marc Chagall

The composition, built on three large round shapes that obviously evoke breasts and a woman's stomach, is also cut in half by a horizon line that delimits two distinct parts. Chagall seems to have wanted to tell his story in this painting: the representation of Jerusalem, in the centre, is twofold: at the top, the city resembles the vision of Saint-Paul-de-Vence, with its ramparts. Below and upside down, it is Vitebsk, recognizable by the sanctuary with its green roof that surmounts it. The whole lower part of the painting, upside down, evokes the artist's youth: the wandering Jew, carrying his bag on his shoulder, talks about his exile, the couple embraced along the lower edge, it is the one he formed with Bella, now lying under the ground. The upper part would then be a hymn to his new life in the South of France, and the couple married under the canopy recalls his second marriage with Vava, to whom the cycle is dedicated.