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New Chagall
Posters Framed in beautiful double-mat black frames
Click
on the Low Resolution Pictures to view detailed, framed images
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The Cock
FRAMED
18 x 24" $99.95
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The
French Poet Apollinaire had described Chagall's paintings as surnaturalist
as early as 1912. Many of the works created during this period are lost.
By 1929 he is in Paris again and becomes a contemporary of the surrealist
movement. What separated him, however, from his colleagues working with
dreams and the unconscious are - and "The Cock" is a prime
example of this - are the reference to his own Russian, peasant and Jewish
history. It is hardly absurdity, the grotesque, or the violent influences
of the unconscious that cock and rider convey, but more a kind of
mellowness. A departure is portrayed, given further resonance by a couple
in a rowing boat in the distance, done in the style of a a French
landscape painting. A tiny couple peep out form behind the rider's foot.
By contrast, the cock - which has been provided with almost human-like
features - and the rider have fused into a single figure and are in
the center of the work. Chagall uses the complimentary contrasts red-green
and blue/orange/yellow in a clear, expressive way, to emphasize the
sensuality and luminosity of the painting to enhance the pictorial idea.
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Champs de Mars
FRAMED
18 x 24" $99.95
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Chagall
visited Greece for the first time in 1952 and again, two years later, at
the age of 67. As of this period, the painter kept a distance from the art
of the day and increasingly withdrew into private life. The unsettled life
he led in previous years became, more or less, a thing of the past.
In 1950, Chagall had moved into a house at Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat,
and two years later he married for the second time: a Russian woman,
Valentina Brodsky, or Vava, as he affectionately called her, became the
object of his undivided love and devotion. Thus the painter had found the
peace and harmony of domestic tranquility just at the time when his
art, and he himself began to attract the public's attention. In spite of
his growing fame, the paintings of his last creative phase are still
wrapped in this feeling of intimacy and naivety. A variation in the theme
of color in its own right is offered by the numerous paintings with flower
motifs, such as "Champs de Mars", which can be seen in Essen
today. The floral motifs provided Chagall with a welcome opportunity to
indulge in the masterful art of painting. Tonal values are savored to the
fullest, with finely modulated hues and a relish for color contrasts.
These visual passages are like islands of pure painting, as it were,
floating in the midst of a painting technique which is no less delicate,
but is much closer to the subject.
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Still Life with Flowers
FRAMED
18 x 24" $99.95
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This
still life could be described as the night version of the next piece. It
was completed in the same year (1949), and is likewise dominated by a
luxuriant bouquet of flowers in a round blue vase. This picture too is an
expression of longing for peace and harmony, of the timelessness of a
relationship which, however, can no longer be physical. Five years after
the death of his first wife Bella and three years before marrying Vava, he
depicts this desire in an abstract manner. The faces are androgynous. The
breasts emerging from from the blue background are only
sketchily assigned to the red-green face. The hard, simple contrasts
red-green, blue-yellow/orange of the heads, framed by the black margins
which are almost too emphatic, form an axis with the fruit in the bowl in
front of the chair, but remain silhouetted against the interior. The heads
are floating above things just as much as the sickle moon in the top
right-hand corner, enclosed within the dark disc of a sun, which forms an
axis with the small blue bird in the bottom left-hand corner. The
brightest point in the picture is the intersection of these
"lines". There the yellow and white of the bouquet is virtually
reduced to an abstract stippling. In the middle of this almost formalist,
pictorial composition, the viewer finds himself once more in that
"disorderliness" which, for Chagall, is the distinguishing
features of dreams.
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Sun & Mimosa
FRAMED
18 x 24" $99.95
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This
is a picture of lucid balance or the longing for it. This painting was
completed in 1949 and can accordingly be placed at the beginning of
Chagall's late work. A number of typical Chagall elements - the couple,
the bouquet of flowers, the cock - are brought together. The picture
is dominated by a rich yellow, in which the couple are sketched. The
tender fusion of man and woman is portrayed not by the embrace of their
bodies but by intense coloration and by the nature of the drawing. The
couple is protected and further illuminated by a brightly colored bouquet
in a round blue vase, which corresponds with the cock falling down head
over heels. This semi-circle serves as the protective frame for the
couple, who are hovering above the line of the horizon. The picture
radiates tranquility in summer pigments. The color is intense, but neither
loud nor fanciful, and is limited to the primary tones plus green. It is
Chagall's almost minimalist recollection of pictorial elements which he
had especially favored during the Thirties before his exile in America.
This time, however, these themes do not occur within the framework of a
picture-story, but are isolated in a harmony which is sufficient unto
itself.
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The Seine Bridges
FRAMED
18 x 24" $99.95
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This
painting is one of the cycle of "Paris" pictures which were
completed in 1954 and exhibited in the same year. In all of them the
architecture of Chagall's adopted home is submerged in blackness and
supplemented by elements, iconic figures and symbols derived from his
“Russian repertoire.” Here one encounters the Madonna with child in
an aggressive red. A bird flaps around her, forming, as it were, her
coat. At the bottom of the picture lies the embracing couple, painted in
a strong blue. The woman holds a reddish, heart-shaped flower.
Above the couple is a typical Chagall cow, which is aligned with the
green strip of the horizon. It is the only living thing in the picture
which looks out at the viewer; it simultaneously points towards the
Madonna. Despite the symbols, objects and figures loaded with meaning,
these paintings remain quite open to interpretation. "If the viewer
discovers a symbol in my picture, that is something I did not intend. It
is a result I have not looked for. It is something that takes place
afterwards and which one can interpret according to taste." What is
special about these paintings is that, in addition to the mingling of
pictorial levels which Chagall practiced with such perseverance, a
liberation of color occurred. This painting in particular can be
"read" as a pure color composition of abstract surfaces.
"In art there is no nationalism. I bear Russia in my heart, but
without France I would not be Chagall."
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The Fiddler
FRAMED
18 x 24" $99.95
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This
is a work from Chagall's first Paris period. The center of interest is the
motif of the fiddler, who traditionally led Jewish wedding processions
in Chagall's homeland. Accompanied by a beggar boy, he advances
towards the viewer on a winding path. A couple, who appear to be newly-wed,
remain in the background. The painting is a reminiscence of an imaginary
Russia, and is perhaps also Chagall's preparation for his return there
(1914-1922). In the years before 1914 Chagall had experimented extensively
with elements of Cubism; he introduced conflicting proportions, turned
figures upside down and chopped them up, divided space into segments and
disrupted spatial unities. “The Fiddler” was painted at a moment of
transition: it marks a definite retreat from Cubist influences. The
space certainly appears to be constructed by the winding path and the
tilted house, yet it becomes clear that Chagall has decided not to push
an analytical view of things to an extreme (as Picasso or Braque had
done), but to turn the newly discovered geometric structures into bearers
of stories, of fancies, of inspirations and sometimes even of actually
experienced incidents. He wanted to bring together his newly won
stylistic tools with a pictorial invention which could once more link up
with older Russian traditions.
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