CHAGALL’S WORLD OF LOVE

This exhibition has been mounted in collaboration with Chagall’s granddaughter Meret Meyer, and some of the major museums in Europe and Russia: Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, Musée national du Message Biblique in Nice, Sprengel Museum in Hannover and State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. Moreover a large number of major works are on loan from private collections. With more than 180 works spanning all of his work – forty paintings, gouaches and drawings as well as 150 lithographs, etchings and sculptures – this exhibition, which will be shown at Arken only, offers a comprehensive and exclusive vision of his world of love and tolerance

A universal, divine factor of life

According to Jewish mysticism the world began its existence as a vessel into which God poured his love. And He filled the vessel beyond its breaking point, shattering it in millions of pieces. Therefore even the most diminutive things in the world hold a spark of divine love. Love, which is ubiquitous, renders everything in life – and thus in art too – poetic, magical and divine. The world was far from ideal to the Jewish-Russian painter. However, with a basis in his own cultural roots, his life and his art nonetheless championed the concept that something binds people together, giving them hope: love. Chagall believed in love as a universal, divine factor of life

From Vitebsk to France

A native of the Jewish community in Belarusian Vitebsk, the desire to become an artist made him immigrate to France in 1911. However, during and after World War I he was forced to return and stay in Vitebsk where he married Bella, the love of his life. In 1923 he travelled back to France and lived there until 1941 when he had to escape to America to avoid the concentration camps. His exile lasted until 1947 when he returned to France, spending the rest of his life there. Only once, in 1973, did Chagall visit his native Russia but he never saw his beloved Vitebsk again.