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Lot Essay
The Comité Marc Chagall has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
Executed in 1943, Le cheval à la lune is one of a small and rare series of gouaches inspired by Marc Chagall’s sojourn in Mexico. Chagall had travelled from New York, where he was living at the time having fled war-torn Europe, to Mexico in the summer of 1942. Together with the Russian choreographer Léonide Massine, Chagall was working on the scenography and costumes for a ballet, Aleko, which was premiering first in Mexico City before opening in New York. Immersed in the intense light and colour of this tropical South American country and captivated by its people and culture, Chagall was reinvigorated and renewed, his art filled with new motifs and vibrant, luminous colour. While working primarily on the sets for the ballet, Chagall made a number of sketches that he then used over the following years for his so-called series of ‘Mexican’ gouaches. Le cheval à la lune is one such work.
A large, rearing horse dominates this incandescent composition, flanked by a woman carrying her child, and a floating male figure. All of these motifs were common in Chagall’s work, yet here they take on fresh identities: no longer is the flying figure a violinist or flute player – symbols that usually refer to the artist’s life in Vitebsk, as well as his Jewish heritage – instead he has a distinctly Mexican appearance, carrying a guitar and wearing a sombrero. Yet, although the motifs are altered, the abiding message remains the same: as Franz Meyer has written of Le cheval à la lune and the series, ‘These works reveal [Chagall’s] deep sympathy with Mexico and the Mexicans. He felt attracted by their ardent, generous nature and was pleased at their feeling for art and their response to his own work. It is these people that we see in the gouaches. But the “Mexican” spirit, apart from this folklore, is expressed in the close kinship of man and beast, an old basic theme of Chagall’s art’ (F. Meyer, Marc Chagall, New York, 1963, p. 440).
Soon after it was created this work was acquired by Keith Warner, an American collector who also acquired work by Mondrian, Calder and Stieglitz. Later, this work entered the renowned collection of Mr. and Mrs. Sidney F. Brody, where it hung alongside masterpieces by Matisse, Braque, Giacometti, as well as the record-breaking Picasso, Nude, Green Leaves and Bust (Sold, Christie’s New York, The Collection of Mrs. Sidney F. Brody, 5 May 2010, $106,482,500).
Executed in 1943, Le cheval à la lune is one of a small and rare series of gouaches inspired by Marc Chagall’s sojourn in Mexico. Chagall had travelled from New York, where he was living at the time having fled war-torn Europe, to Mexico in the summer of 1942. Together with the Russian choreographer Léonide Massine, Chagall was working on the scenography and costumes for a ballet, Aleko, which was premiering first in Mexico City before opening in New York. Immersed in the intense light and colour of this tropical South American country and captivated by its people and culture, Chagall was reinvigorated and renewed, his art filled with new motifs and vibrant, luminous colour. While working primarily on the sets for the ballet, Chagall made a number of sketches that he then used over the following years for his so-called series of ‘Mexican’ gouaches. Le cheval à la lune is one such work.
A large, rearing horse dominates this incandescent composition, flanked by a woman carrying her child, and a floating male figure. All of these motifs were common in Chagall’s work, yet here they take on fresh identities: no longer is the flying figure a violinist or flute player – symbols that usually refer to the artist’s life in Vitebsk, as well as his Jewish heritage – instead he has a distinctly Mexican appearance, carrying a guitar and wearing a sombrero. Yet, although the motifs are altered, the abiding message remains the same: as Franz Meyer has written of Le cheval à la lune and the series, ‘These works reveal [Chagall’s] deep sympathy with Mexico and the Mexicans. He felt attracted by their ardent, generous nature and was pleased at their feeling for art and their response to his own work. It is these people that we see in the gouaches. But the “Mexican” spirit, apart from this folklore, is expressed in the close kinship of man and beast, an old basic theme of Chagall’s art’ (F. Meyer, Marc Chagall, New York, 1963, p. 440).
Soon after it was created this work was acquired by Keith Warner, an American collector who also acquired work by Mondrian, Calder and Stieglitz. Later, this work entered the renowned collection of Mr. and Mrs. Sidney F. Brody, where it hung alongside masterpieces by Matisse, Braque, Giacometti, as well as the record-breaking Picasso, Nude, Green Leaves and Bust (Sold, Christie’s New York, The Collection of Mrs. Sidney F. Brody, 5 May 2010, $106,482,500).