3267 - MARC CHAGALL

MARC CHAGALL (Vitebsk 1887–1985 Saint-Paul-de-Vence) The Couple and the Bouquet Above the City. 1979. Oil, tempera, and ink on hardboard. Signed and dated lower right: Marc / Chagall / 1979. 54 × 46 cm. Certificate: Comité Marc Chagall, Saint-Paul, June 24, 1993. Provenance: - Private collection, Paris. - Auction at Galerie Koller, Zurich, November 19, 1993, lot 3032. - Private collection, Switzerland/Italy, acquired at the above auction and passed by inheritance to the present owners. Painted in 1979, “Le couple et le bouquet au-dessus de la ville” belongs to Marc Chagall’s mature late work. By then 92 years old, the artist had long enjoyed international recognition and had been living in Saint-Paul-de-Vence in southern France since 1966. Despite his advanced age, Chagall remained exceptionally active, continuing to paint and undertake major commissions. That same year, these included a mosaic for Vence Cathedral and lithographic projects for the Parisian art publisher Aimé Maeght. In his late paintings, Chagall returned to themes he had first explored during his early years in Paris and Vitebsk—themes that had shaped his unmistakable pictorial language over decades. This painting brings together several of these characteristic motifs. The couple floating above the town recalls Chagall’s early depictions of lovers, which stemmed from his relationship with Bella Rosenfeld. In works from the 1910s, he first expressed love visually through the suspension of gravity. Freed from their earthly surroundings, the lovers float above the rooftops of their hometown. This became one of the most enduring motifs in Chagall’s body of work. The townscape in the lower part of the painting refers back to his early depictions of Vitebsk. During his first stay in Paris, from 1910 to 1914, Chagall was already transforming memories of his Russian homeland into an imaginary world in which different places and periods merge. Here, too, the houses, streets, and small figures appear less as a view of an identifiable place than as a recollection of a familiar world long since past. The large bouquet, meanwhile, revisits a motif that became increasingly prominent in Chagall’s paintings from the 1920s onward. Following his return to France in 1923, flower still lifes became a regular feature of his body of work, often combined with lovers and townscapes. In this painting, the abundant bouquet and its luminous colors contrast with the predominantly blue figures and the gray-pink townscape below. * The full tax is charged on this item marked *; that is, VAT will be charged on the total amount but refunded to purchasers upon presentation of a validly stamped export declaration.