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Lot Essay
L'offrande au peintre presents a moving example of Marc Chagall's joyous outlook onto the world. Throughout his career, Chagall created a unique universe of symbols and figures often floating across wide expanses of colour which, in their ensemble, seemed to conjure memories, dreams and poetic celebrations of life. In L'offrande au peintre, the act of painting opens up a whole world of images: as the painter portrays flowers on his canvas, a woman suddenly appears next to him, perhaps symbolising a muse, guiding and protecting the artist in his creative flow. Images and figures, emerging from memory or perhaps from his imagination, float all around.
The small huts of the village seem to recall Chagall's native town Vitebsk (now Viciebsk), in Belarus, while the figures may evoke people from the artist's life. Symbolical l y , L'offrande au peintre - 'offering to the painter' - may have been intended by Chagall as a celebration of painting and its power to evoke memories, unite people and create new worlds. Although born in Belarus, Chagall is regarded as one of the foremost exponents of the Parisian school of painting. He spent a great part of his life in France, becoming a friend of artists such as Picasso. In this regard, Chagall belongs to those numerous artists who, at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, had searched for artistic inspiration and recognition in Paris, a city regarded at the time as the cultural capi t a l of Europe. Chagall had come to Paris in search for light and colour. 'I hate Russian or Central Europe colour', he admitted, 'it is like the footwear there. Soutine, me, all of us left because of colour. I was very dark when I arrived in Paris. I was potatocoloured, like Van Gogh. Paris is light and bright' (M. Chagall, quoted in J. Baal-Teshuva, Marc Chagall 1887-1985, K?ln, 1998, p. 206). In L'offrande au peintre, space has dissolved into pure colour: the figures and symbols of Chagall's art are juxtaposed against a backdrop of intense yellow and red. The diagonal division of the canvas seems to evoke a symbolic division between the painter's earthly reality and the artistic universe of his creation.
Chagall painted L'offrande au peintre in 1983. By that time, the artist had achieved worldwide success, and was being celebrated as one of the most important painters of the Twentieth Century through a series of momentous exhibitions. In 1984, the Muse National d'Art Moderne in Paris organised an important retrospective of Chagall's works on paper, while the Maeght Foundation in Saint-Paul-de-Vence arranged a major retrospective of his paintings. In 1985, the Royal Academy in London also honoured the painter with a major exhibition, which then travelled to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, reaffirming the artist's stature beyond Europe.
The small huts of the village seem to recall Chagall's native town Vitebsk (now Viciebsk), in Belarus, while the figures may evoke people from the artist's life. Symbolical l y , L'offrande au peintre - 'offering to the painter' - may have been intended by Chagall as a celebration of painting and its power to evoke memories, unite people and create new worlds. Although born in Belarus, Chagall is regarded as one of the foremost exponents of the Parisian school of painting. He spent a great part of his life in France, becoming a friend of artists such as Picasso. In this regard, Chagall belongs to those numerous artists who, at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, had searched for artistic inspiration and recognition in Paris, a city regarded at the time as the cultural capi t a l of Europe. Chagall had come to Paris in search for light and colour. 'I hate Russian or Central Europe colour', he admitted, 'it is like the footwear there. Soutine, me, all of us left because of colour. I was very dark when I arrived in Paris. I was potatocoloured, like Van Gogh. Paris is light and bright' (M. Chagall, quoted in J. Baal-Teshuva, Marc Chagall 1887-1985, K?ln, 1998, p. 206). In L'offrande au peintre, space has dissolved into pure colour: the figures and symbols of Chagall's art are juxtaposed against a backdrop of intense yellow and red. The diagonal division of the canvas seems to evoke a symbolic division between the painter's earthly reality and the artistic universe of his creation.
Chagall painted L'offrande au peintre in 1983. By that time, the artist had achieved worldwide success, and was being celebrated as one of the most important painters of the Twentieth Century through a series of momentous exhibitions. In 1984, the Muse National d'Art Moderne in Paris organised an important retrospective of Chagall's works on paper, while the Maeght Foundation in Saint-Paul-de-Vence arranged a major retrospective of his paintings. In 1985, the Royal Academy in London also honoured the painter with a major exhibition, which then travelled to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, reaffirming the artist's stature beyond Europe.