Lot Essay
'In life, just as on the artist’s palette, there is but one single colour that gives meaning to life and art – the colour of love’.
-Marc Chagall (quoted in N. Lynton, ‘Chagall “over the Roofs of the World”,’ in S. Compton, ed., Chagall, exh. cat., Philadelphia, 1985, p. 21).
From his youth through to his final golden years, love in all its multifaceted brilliance remained a principal driving force in Chagall’s oeuvre, a constant and ever-evolving source of inspiration that underpinned his creativity and fed his most celebrated compositions. Masterfully combining his personal experiences with a sense of the universal, the artist conjured rich, evocative visions that spoke to the many different sides of the emotion and its enduring power, which had been so transformative for his own life. As Chagall explained: ‘everything will be transformed when we pronounce, unconstrained, this word “Love” – a word which indeed is wrapped in an envelope of romanticism… In it lies the true Art: from it comes my technique, my religion …’ (‘Art and Life’ Lecture, Chicago 1968; in B. Harshav, ed., Marc Chagall on Art and Culture, Stanford, 2003, p. 135).
-Marc Chagall (quoted in N. Lynton, ‘Chagall “over the Roofs of the World”,’ in S. Compton, ed., Chagall, exh. cat., Philadelphia, 1985, p. 21).
From his youth through to his final golden years, love in all its multifaceted brilliance remained a principal driving force in Chagall’s oeuvre, a constant and ever-evolving source of inspiration that underpinned his creativity and fed his most celebrated compositions. Masterfully combining his personal experiences with a sense of the universal, the artist conjured rich, evocative visions that spoke to the many different sides of the emotion and its enduring power, which had been so transformative for his own life. As Chagall explained: ‘everything will be transformed when we pronounce, unconstrained, this word “Love” – a word which indeed is wrapped in an envelope of romanticism… In it lies the true Art: from it comes my technique, my religion …’ (‘Art and Life’ Lecture, Chicago 1968; in B. Harshav, ed., Marc Chagall on Art and Culture, Stanford, 2003, p. 135).