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Lot Essay
The Comité Marc Chagall has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
L'acrobate à cheval, a dazzling and energetic work depicting the gripping performance of a nimble acrobat, was painted during a period of unparalleled happiness and contentment for Chagall and his family. Facing increasing intolerance under the new Russian regime, Chagall returned to Paris in 1923 where he was immediately enchanted by the liberty, light and color of his adoptive homeland. Now a respected and successful artist, he benefited from the financial security afforded him through sales of his works and exhibitions in France, Germany and New York and was able to explore France at his leisure. Chagall exclaimed:
In Paris I frequented neither schools nor teachers. I found them in the city itself, at every step, everywhere. There were tradesmen in the market, the café waiters, the concierges, the peasants, the workers. Around them hovered this astonishing 'freedom-light,' which I have never seen elsewhere. And this light passed easily onto the canvases of the great French masters and was reborn in art. I couldn't help thinking: only this 'freedom-light,' more luminous than all the sources of artificial light, can give birth to such shining canvases, in which revolutions in technique are as natural as the language, the gestures, the work of the passers-by in the street (quoted in Chagall: A Retrospective, New York, 1995, p. 74).
Chagall had befriended the legendary dealer Ambroise Vollard, who in 1927 invited him to share his box seats at the Cirque d'Hiver that season. Inspired by this exhilarating spectacle, Chagall painted 19 gouaches, which formed the Cirque Vollard, and later in the year executed a second group of circus scenes, which included the present gouache. Franz Meyer comments on these works:
Linked with the Circus cycle is a small group of works in which the violence of the painterly impulse is so intense that the colors are flung on the canvas, spraying the background in a fine drizzle or searing it like a hissing meteor. The areas handled in this fashion recall Pollock and we see across the decades an affinity between Chagall's direct rendering of psychic tension and the American artist's vital spiritism (op. cit., p. 355).
The "freedom light" discovered by Chagall in Paris is evident in the brilliant, luminescent colors of the present gouache and further exemplified by the manner in which he splattered the paint across the sheet, much like the dazzling shimmer of light on a sunny day. Meyer elaborates on the artist's supernatural manifestation of light in the present work: "the life force is transformed into a firework of figural magic and sparkling light...the color flickers before the dark ground as if the objects were bathed in moonlight" (op. cit., p. 366). The dynamic vibrancy and ecstatic energy of this circus series is never again witnessed in Chagall's oeuvre, signifying that this period marked an apex--both personally and creatively--for the artist.
L'acrobate à cheval, a dazzling and energetic work depicting the gripping performance of a nimble acrobat, was painted during a period of unparalleled happiness and contentment for Chagall and his family. Facing increasing intolerance under the new Russian regime, Chagall returned to Paris in 1923 where he was immediately enchanted by the liberty, light and color of his adoptive homeland. Now a respected and successful artist, he benefited from the financial security afforded him through sales of his works and exhibitions in France, Germany and New York and was able to explore France at his leisure. Chagall exclaimed:
In Paris I frequented neither schools nor teachers. I found them in the city itself, at every step, everywhere. There were tradesmen in the market, the café waiters, the concierges, the peasants, the workers. Around them hovered this astonishing 'freedom-light,' which I have never seen elsewhere. And this light passed easily onto the canvases of the great French masters and was reborn in art. I couldn't help thinking: only this 'freedom-light,' more luminous than all the sources of artificial light, can give birth to such shining canvases, in which revolutions in technique are as natural as the language, the gestures, the work of the passers-by in the street (quoted in Chagall: A Retrospective, New York, 1995, p. 74).
Chagall had befriended the legendary dealer Ambroise Vollard, who in 1927 invited him to share his box seats at the Cirque d'Hiver that season. Inspired by this exhilarating spectacle, Chagall painted 19 gouaches, which formed the Cirque Vollard, and later in the year executed a second group of circus scenes, which included the present gouache. Franz Meyer comments on these works:
Linked with the Circus cycle is a small group of works in which the violence of the painterly impulse is so intense that the colors are flung on the canvas, spraying the background in a fine drizzle or searing it like a hissing meteor. The areas handled in this fashion recall Pollock and we see across the decades an affinity between Chagall's direct rendering of psychic tension and the American artist's vital spiritism (op. cit., p. 355).
The "freedom light" discovered by Chagall in Paris is evident in the brilliant, luminescent colors of the present gouache and further exemplified by the manner in which he splattered the paint across the sheet, much like the dazzling shimmer of light on a sunny day. Meyer elaborates on the artist's supernatural manifestation of light in the present work: "the life force is transformed into a firework of figural magic and sparkling light...the color flickers before the dark ground as if the objects were bathed in moonlight" (op. cit., p. 366). The dynamic vibrancy and ecstatic energy of this circus series is never again witnessed in Chagall's oeuvre, signifying that this period marked an apex--both personally and creatively--for the artist.