CHAGALL. Il colore dei sogni

Continues the successful exhibition activity conceived by Fondazione Musei Civici for the city of Mestre around the Masters of the Twentieth Century. After the line of abstraction, which started with Kandinsky and reached International Informal, it is still a Russian master who characterizes the new "journey" through the civic collections of modern and contemporary art, Marc Chagall.

 

Starting from the masterpiece preserved in the collections of Ca' Pesaro International Gallery of Modern Art, Rabbi No. 2 or Rabbi of Vitebsk, 1914-1922, acquired by the Municipality of Venice at the Biennale of 1928, the exhibition aims to investigate the revolutionary impact of Chagall's art as a painting of dreams and a triumph of creative fantasy. The exhibition is conceived with masterpieces preserved in Ca' Pesaro, accompanied in each section by important and precise works by Chagall from prestigious international collections. Thanks to loans from the Albertina in Vienna, the Musée National Marc Chagall in Nice, the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest, and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, Chagall becomes a common thread that connects works and artists who felt their production in terms similar to his or were inspired by him to develop their art in the most diverse directions.

 

Chagall's fantastic journey unfolds through the art of the 20th century and is articulated in 6 sections that start from Symbolist Dream, with the dreamlike poetry of Odilon Redon, Cesare Laurenti, and Adolfo Wildt. The second section of the exhibition is titled It is only mine / the country that is in my soul and is entirely dedicated to Marc Chagall, with The Rabbi of Ca' Pesaro for the first time alongside Vitebsk. Village Scene from the Batliner collection at the Albertina in Vienna. Artists in exile instead deals with the theme of emigration to the United States by numerous authors forced to leave Europe during the thirties. The contiguity of the "Rabbi" of Ca' Pesaro with Cubist and Constructivist emergencies is compared with the sculptures of Ossip Zadkine, up to the Surrealism of Max Ernst, who looked to Chagall as an essential starting point for his art. The fourth section focuses on Chagall's beloved themes, love and color. The color of dreams accompanies the research of the Russian Master to that of European expressionism, well represented by the fiery colors of Emil Nolde. A large section of the exhibition is dedicated to religious works, especially Marc Chagall's illustrations for the Bible commissioned by Ambroise Vollard. The engravings donated by the artist to the Musée National Chagall in Nice in 1972 will be exhibited, accompanied by the precious original plates with which the graphics were created. The biblical theme and the Crucifixion start from Chagall and develop towards Symbolist or Primitivist outcomes that emerge in the extraordinary works from the collections of Ca' Pesaro exhibited in the show. Close for reflection on Christ, the Cross, and the spiritual significance of existence are the masterpieces, restored for the occasion and finally made available to the public, by the French Georges Rouault, the Belgian Frank Brangwyn, the Swede Veikko Aaltona, and the Hungarian István Csók. The exhibition ends with a sixth section all about the fantasy, illogical, instinctive, and joyful, of the message that Chagall left us. The color of fables starts from the graphic project on La Fontaine's Fables created by Chagall in the twenties of the last century and is colored by the fantastic visions of George Grosz and the reflections, between fables and myth, of Félicien Rops, Frank Barwig, and Mario De Maria.

 

The utopia and anti-modernity of Chagall's lesson, expressed in painting and graphic works, also characterize the second half of the century in trials of an unprecedented dreamlike atmosphere, as in the sculpture of Claudio Parmiggiani, in the painting of Corrado Balest and Carlo Hoellesch.