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Lot Essay
The Comité Chagall has confirmed the authenticity of this painting.
Many of the constituent elements of Chagall's fantastic repertory find their place in Nu sur fond rouge, from the eponymous female form with attendant profile of her lover - as so often, resembling the artist's own profile - through to the chimerical menagerie of cow, goat and bird, all portrayed against a backdrop of Chagall's beloved Saint-Paul de Vence which is itself burnished by a setting sun. This sheer visual generosity captures the essence of Chagall's all-encompassing humanism at one stroke.
The love affair between Chagall and the city of Paris, which had begun with the artist's arrival in the French capital in 1910, enjoyed the firmest affirmation some sixty years later with the great retrospective of Chagall's work held at the Grand Palais. Among the sumptuous roster of inclusions, spanning from the artist's St Petersburg period through his wondrous proto-Surrealist works and on to the exuberance of his mature oils, Nu sur fond rouge found its rightful place as a significant representative of his 1960s style.
Many of the constituent elements of Chagall's fantastic repertory find their place in Nu sur fond rouge, from the eponymous female form with attendant profile of her lover - as so often, resembling the artist's own profile - through to the chimerical menagerie of cow, goat and bird, all portrayed against a backdrop of Chagall's beloved Saint-Paul de Vence which is itself burnished by a setting sun. This sheer visual generosity captures the essence of Chagall's all-encompassing humanism at one stroke.
The love affair between Chagall and the city of Paris, which had begun with the artist's arrival in the French capital in 1910, enjoyed the firmest affirmation some sixty years later with the great retrospective of Chagall's work held at the Grand Palais. Among the sumptuous roster of inclusions, spanning from the artist's St Petersburg period through his wondrous proto-Surrealist works and on to the exuberance of his mature oils, Nu sur fond rouge found its rightful place as a significant representative of his 1960s style.