Marc Chagall at the Pompidou Center

The eminent Franco-Belarusian painter Marc CHAGALL is currently the subject of an exceptional exhibition at the Pompidou Center in Paris. Titled Chagall à l’œuvre, the exhibition highlights a set of works that was donated to the museum in 2022 by the painter’s granddaughters, Bella and Meret Meyer. It includes 127 drawings, 5 ceramics and 7 sculptures giving the Parisian museum one of the largest and most representative collections of the artist’s work.

“I like to make the drawing sing with color” Marc Chagall

This body of work highlights the evolution of Chagall’s artistic practice as a painter, a sculptor and a ceramist. It also includes work from two large-scale commissions between 1945 and 1970. Structured around three themes, the exhibition shows the preparatory studies for the stage costumes and curtains of Igor Stravinsky’s ballet, The Firebird, put on by the New York Ballet Theater in 1945, the sketches and models for the ceiling decoration of the Opéra Garnier in Paris commissioned in 1962, as well as a collection of ceramics, collages and sculptures created in the 1950s.

For the exhibition’s curator, Anne Monfort-Tanguy: “The ceiling (at the Opéra Garnier) is the epitome of Chagall’s work. It’s his autobiography… his vision of Paris. All the artists he admired are represented along with the Parisian monuments that were important to him such as the Eiffel Tower. It also reflects his taste for modernity, the Cubists, and the work of Robert Delaunay. His work on the Garnier ceiling is perfectly in tune with Charles Garnier’s architecture. Previously, he had only worked on the stage; with the ceiling work he became present in the auditorium. A moving, fluid, almost cinematographic space, the Garnier ceiling represents a form of total work of art”.

The first two sections of this retrospective highlight Chagall’s passion for music and its place in his visual creations. Music was both a source of inspiration and a recurring subject in his work.

The last section focuses more on the diversification of the artist’s techniques and skills from 1950 to 1970 showing the different materials he explored, such as marble, pebbles, bones and even plaster, as well as the recurring figures and characters in his work such as the Eiffel Tower, the couple, the village, religious elements and his bestiary (roosters, donkeys, imaginary horses, etc.).

At the end of the WWII, Chagall enjoyed international recognition. From the 1950s, he settled in Vence in Southern France where he met Picasso. Over the following two decades 20 years, he accepted various large-scale commissions and conducted a range of artistic experiments. This retrospective is an opportunity to explore the wealth of the artist’s creative process.

2023: Chagall fervor, a record year!

Marc Chagall’s work is also the subject of two other exhibitions in France: one immersive show at the Atelier des Lumières in the 11th district of Paris, and the other at La Piscine – Musée d’art et d’histoire André Diligent in Roubaix. The year 2023 also marks the 50th anniversary of his museum in Nice and the launch of an official website dedicated to his immense career: marcchagall.com offers numerous images of his works, a catalog raisonné, archives, resources and news about events, and is an inexhaustible resource for fans of the artist and a fantastic tool for discovering both his work and his personal life.

This exposure has also been been reflected by activity in his auction market with several sales dedicated entirely to his work, notably, the exhibition-sale The Color of Love: The art of Marc Chagall hosted by Sotheby’s in Hong Kong in April 2023, but also Chagall and Music at Christie’s in Paris in March, where prices literally skyrocketed. A small little pen drawing of a Ange violoniste (1938) offered at $3,000 reached $62,000, while a 1974 drawing on a lithographic base titled Rencontre multicolore avec le peintre sold for $385,809. He also signed his 4th best-ever auction result with Au-dessus de la ville (1924) at $15.6 million at Sotheby’s NY. His absolute auction record dates back to 2017 when his Les amoureux (1928) fetched $28.4 million at Sotheby’s NY, doubling its mid-range estimate.

Chagall’s price index between 2000 and 2024 (copyright Artprice.com)

The year 2023 was full of events dedicated to the artist thereby intensifying collectors’ interest in his works on the market. Chagall is among the most sought-after artists of our time: in 2023 his works generated over $83.9 million at auction, making him the 23rd top-selling artist on the global art auction market.