Marc Chagall

Fables and Folklore

Works on Paper

6th March to 4th May 2025

Chagall was born in the year 1887 in the city of Vitebsk, which was then part of Russia. After engaging in his studies in St. Petersburg, he made his way to Paris, where he formed friendships with influential figures in the avant-garde circle of artists, significantly shaping his artistic perspective. In 1917, he returned to his beloved native Vitebsk, where he was appointed as both the Director and Commissar of Fine Art. However, his imaginative and fantasy-based work soon irked the more conservative authorities, compelling him to leave for Moscow, where he took on the role of designer for the new theatre. In 1923, he returned to Paris, where he had the opportunity to meet the art dealer Vollard, for whom he illustrated notable works such as Gogol’s Dead Souls and the timeless Fables of La Fontaine. Between the years 1941 and 1947, Chagall moved back and forth between occupied France and the United States, ultimately settling in the picturesque region near Nice. Throughout his life, Chagall proved to be a prolific and innovative artist, with his work reflecting biblical stories, and the rich folklore from his formative years in Russia. He passed away in 1985, leaving behind a legacy that continues to inspire.

The Fables of La Fontaine

The etchings for La Fontaine’s Fables were commissioned by the famous art dealer Ambroise Vollard and his choice of the ‘romantic’ artist Chagall to illustrate the ‘classical’ French masterpiece created a considerable furore at the time, even being debated in the Chamber of Deputies. Vollard answered the question of Why Chagall? by saying, simply because his aesthetic seems to me in a certain sense akin to La Fontaine’s, at once sound and delicate, realistic and fantastic.

They are considered one of the great suites of the 20th century.

Gogol’s The Dead Souls

In September 1923, emboldened by a letter received from his old friend the French poet Blaise Cendrars declaring ‘Come, you are famous here, and Vollard is waiting for you,’ Chagall left Berlin for Paris; a decision that was to have a profound affect on his future career. Vollard was indeed waiting for him with a commission to illustrate one of the deluxe livres de peinture that the dealer had a passion for. Chagall suggested Gogol’s Dead Souls, one of his and Bella’s favourite books and began work immediately.

The story follows the ignominious hero Chichikov’s epic journey across provincial Russia as he barters with bureaucrats and swindlers to buy up the names of dead serfs. It afforded him limitless scope for returning, in his imagination, to the rural Russia of his childhood and allowed him to tap into the ‘magic chaos’ that chimed with his own art and life.

The etchings for the Dead Souls were executed between 1923 and 1927 and printed in 1927 where they then lay in Vollard’s warehouse ‘sleeping their sweet sleep’ as Chagall put it. They were finally united with the text and published by Tériade in 1948 after Vollard’s untimely death.

The suite is a wonderful affirmation of the human spirit and life and all its contradictions or as Meyer so eloquently puts it: ‘This entire world of stupidity, malice, and selfishness is rendered transparent through humour…Everywhere, running through all the comical elements, and borne along by a sort of inner joyfulness, there appears the fantastic, rich, inexhaustible reality of Russian life.’

The Bible Series Lithographs

When Chagall met renowned printer, Fernand Mourlot in 1948 at his atelier in Paris, he realized that in lithography he had found the perfect graphic medium for his art. It rapidly became his preferred printing technique due primarily to the possibilities it offered with colour.

Following Tériade’s acquisition of the etched Bible Suite it was suggested that Chagall re-imagine a Bible Series in colour lithography. These lithographs, printed by the great French lithographers Mourlot Frères, were published in 1956. They were met with such critical praise that Chagall produced a further set in 1960.

Celui qui Dit les Choses sans Rien Dire

Delicate and intimate, Chagall’s etchings for this suite were made in 1976 when he was 89 years old at the very end of his life. They were published in an edition of 225 only, one of the artist’s last and most personal works.

Published by Maeght, Chagall illustrated the words of the French poet Louis Aragon for this suite of 25 etchings with aquatint. Aragon was one of the founding members of the Surrealist movement which swept through the art world in the early 1920s.

Aragon’s poetry was strange and diverse, often swaying between the lyrical and the overtly political. The title of Chagall’s series – ‘Those who speak without saying anything’ – highlights the satirical bent to Aragon’s poetry, but also the key surrealist concept of unconscious action: ‘speaking’ without ‘saying’.

Other works available

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