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Lot Essay
This work is sold with a photo-certificate from the Comité Marc Chagall.
With its vivid colours and poetic scene of lovers, flowers and the shimmering landscape of the Côte d'Azur, Fleurs et fruits devant la mer encapsulates all of Chagall's most emblematic motifs. It is a work redolent with the beauty and joy in colour that is so typical of his work following his move to the South of France following the Second World War. Chagall's experiences working with stained glass windows during the Post-War period appear to have informed his deliberate exploration of the contrast between the twilight blue that suffuses so much of the surface and the incandescent bursts of yellow and red in the flowers and fruit, resulting in the intense vibrancy of this picture. At the same time, Chagall's world of romance is hinted at in the figures of the lovers to the foreground, as the bay of Nice stretches out behind them. For Chagall, love and beauty were powerful elements, forces that could only bring more harmony to a world that, during his lifetime, appeared in need of it. Explaining his dedication to this cause he said, 'I thought that only love and uncalculating devotion towards others will lead to the greatest harmony in life and in art of which humanity has been dreaming so long. And this must, of course, be included in each utterance, in each brushstroke, and in each colour' (Chagall, quoted in Chagall: A Retrospective, ed. J. Baal-Teshuva, Westport, 1995, p. 208). Looking at this work, one is immersed into Chagall's world, filled with an abundance of romantic possibility, hope and optimism.
With its vivid colours and poetic scene of lovers, flowers and the shimmering landscape of the Côte d'Azur, Fleurs et fruits devant la mer encapsulates all of Chagall's most emblematic motifs. It is a work redolent with the beauty and joy in colour that is so typical of his work following his move to the South of France following the Second World War. Chagall's experiences working with stained glass windows during the Post-War period appear to have informed his deliberate exploration of the contrast between the twilight blue that suffuses so much of the surface and the incandescent bursts of yellow and red in the flowers and fruit, resulting in the intense vibrancy of this picture. At the same time, Chagall's world of romance is hinted at in the figures of the lovers to the foreground, as the bay of Nice stretches out behind them. For Chagall, love and beauty were powerful elements, forces that could only bring more harmony to a world that, during his lifetime, appeared in need of it. Explaining his dedication to this cause he said, 'I thought that only love and uncalculating devotion towards others will lead to the greatest harmony in life and in art of which humanity has been dreaming so long. And this must, of course, be included in each utterance, in each brushstroke, and in each colour' (Chagall, quoted in Chagall: A Retrospective, ed. J. Baal-Teshuva, Westport, 1995, p. 208). Looking at this work, one is immersed into Chagall's world, filled with an abundance of romantic possibility, hope and optimism.