.Chagall - the storyteller
Marc Chagall, Florence Maeght's Golden Book, 1969.
What attracted Aimé to Chagall's works? His gaze of wonder, the telescoping of images and cultures? His singular and audacious vision? Its animals that fly, its soldiers that drink? The whole without doubt and the man, the inexhaustible storyteller, his enthusiasm and his authenticity. “When I met the man, I understood that he was a great painter,” he said. Their meeting took place in New York, during the young merchant's first trip, in 1947. Then Aimé went to find him, in France, in a small village, in Chambourcy, opposite another great painter, André Derain, for the take under contract. He is seduced by the green and pink cat that licks an upside-down face, by slanting houses with red roofs, by aerial horses that eat turnips, by a giant rooster, from below which merges with the top, by the near and the far which are juxtaposed, by the space where everything seems to float...
Marc Chagall, Lovers in the Moonlight, 1952, gouache on paper, 65 x55 cm
Aimé understands that in Chagall's paintings, there is neither disorder nor system but that behind all these crazy images hides a subtle man beyond all anecdotes. He undoubtedly finds his share of irrationality there.
“A painting is a surface covered with representations of things (objects, animals, human forms) in a certain order, in which logic and illustration have no importance” explains the painter.
Marc Chagall in his studio painting Life for the Maeght Foundation.
Throughout his life, the artist will tell stories, stories, linked to his own history and that of his people. Stories from the Old Testament, but also stories that unravel, intersect, mingle. It is impossible to dissociate Chagall from his roots, his youth in Vitebsk and his education within the community of Hasidim, fervent Jews. Thus, we find in his paintings a style of narrative used by the rabbis, and which refuses any heavy theory, but combines mystical fervor and humor.
Marc Chagall, The Yellow Sun, 1958, oil on canvas, 97x130 cm.
In April 1950, Marc Chagall's first exhibition, at the Galerie Maeght, brought together a collection of his various modes of expression, paintings, washes, gouaches, engravings and ceramics. On this occasion, he created his first lithographic poster in the Mourlot workshops. That year, the painter moved to Vence; then in 1966, in Saint-Paul, on the same hill as the Maeghts.
Aimé Maeght, Marc and Vava Chagall, Paris, 1962.
Adrien and Paule's daughters often cycle by to see him. He tells them, like stories, the Bible. The Maeghts and Chagall had many mutual friends, including André Malraux, who commissioned him in 1964 to decorate the dome of the ceiling of the Opéra Garnier in Paris. For the official inauguration, attended by the political and artistic world, Aimé Maeght chose Isabelle, 9 years old, on his arm.
Joan Miró and Mar c Chagall at an opening at the Maeght gallery.
On July 7, 1973, his 86th birthday, still with his friend André Malraux, he inaugurated the National Message Biblique Marc Chagall Museum, in Nice. In 1976, he illustrated Malraux's “Et sur la terre” with fifteen etchings, which was published by Maeght a few weeks after the writer's death. The Gallery and the Maeght Foundation will regularly celebrate the artist through retrospectives, exhibitions and editions.
Speech by Marc Chagall on the occasion of the presentation of the Legion of Honor to Aimé Maeght, September 28, 1964. on the right Marc Chagall at the Maeght Foundation, 1978
" To paint. A man spent his life painting. And when I say his life, mean well. The rest is posturing. Painting is his life. What does he paint? Fruits, flowers, the entry of a king into a city? Everything that can be explained is something other than life. Than his life. His life is painting. Inexplicably. Painting or speaking perhaps: he sees as we hear. Things painted on the canvas like pretended sentences. The words follow one another. Everything is a sentence after all, there is no need to understand: is it music, then why painting? » Louis Aragon, Behind the Looking Glass, 1972
Marc Chagall in his Parisian studio, quai de l'Horloge, 1968.
A Russian by a Russian, “In the Snow” by Marc Chagall, 1922.
Superb poster of the Chagall exhibition in December 1969 at the Galerie Maeght
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