Lot 58 : MARC CHAGALL
Auction Location: United Kingdom - 2006
Please sign in or subscribe to Invaluable Premium or Invaluable Fine Art to see auction date and house information.
Please sign in or subscribe to Invaluable Premium or Invaluable Fine Art to view enlarged images.
Description:
1887-1985
LE SOIR
measurements
71 by 106cm.
alternate measurements
28 by 41 3/4 in.
Painted in 1957.
signed Marc Chagall and dated 1957 (lower left)
oil on canvas
LITERATURE
Franz Meyer, Marc Chagall, Life and Work, New York, 1961, no. 962, illustrated
NOTE
Painted in 1957, Le Soir is an exquisite example of Chagall's lifelong devotion to dream-like imagery and colour. The cockerel, lovers and flowers are key elements of his own naïve iconography, appearing again and again throughout his ~uvre, wistfully recalling the folkloric traditions of his childhood in Russia. This painting is an intensely personal creation; an eerie evocation of his native Vitebsk into which the viewer has been invited to wander. Unlike the Surrealists who used painting to dramatise the confrontational and disturbing potential of the subconscious, Chagall found an affinity between painting and dreaming through which he was able to articulate the deepest desires of his heart: 'painting seemed to me like a window through which I could have taken flight toward another world' (quoted in Susan Compton, Chagall, London, 1985, p. 20).
As such, Chagall's paintings defy symbolic meaning and categorisation. In particular, his dreamscapes resist interpretation despite the ubiquity of repeated pictorial symbols; through repetition they become both familiar and meaningless, manifestations of a rich and colourful imagination that can be understood not through intellect but through intuition. As the artist himself proclaimed: 'For me a picture is a surface covered with representations of things (objects, animals, human beings) in a certain order in which logic and illustration have no importance. The visual effect of the composition is what is paramount' (quoted in ibid., p. 21).
Other Lots from Chagall:
View all Auction Results for Chagall
