Chagall exhibition celebrating color opens at MAM

An exhibition featuring more than 100 works by Russian-French artist Marc Chagall was inaugurated yesterday evening at the Macau Museum of Art (MAM).

Organized by MAM, and co- organized by the Macau Government Tourism Office and the Macao Foundation, the exhibition “Marc Chagall, Light and Colour in Southern France” is both a part of the 29th Macao Arts Festival and the 2018 Le French May.

The exhibition includes a wide variety of pieces created during Chagall’s residency in the south of France between the 1950s and 1970s, including paintings, gouaches, lithographs, costumes and tapestries. It also features designs for stained glass windows of a synagogue in Jerusalem and costumes and tapestries made by the artist.

It documents a sample of his creations during the period when his art took on its most distinctive shape and form, inspired by his later years in the French Côte d’Azur, where the deep blue of the Mediterranean Sea and dazzling landscapes gave rise to paintings full of intense and vibrant colors.

The exhibition “allows us to get a glance at this beautiful region [that] he loved, through his very special touch,” said Paule Ignatio, acting consul general of France in Hong Kong and Macau, at yesterday’s ceremony.

Marc Chagall (1887-1985) was born to a Jewish family in White Russia (present-day Belarus) at the end of the 19th century, where he developed an intense interest in art at a young age.

Prior to the First World War, Chagall spent his time traveling between Saint Petersburg, Berlin and Paris – the then-capital of the art world. As he become more well-known, he spent an increasing amount of time in the French capital before moving to the United States in the early 1940s to escape religious persecution in Nazi-occupied France.

He settled in the south of France in the 1950s, having finally been granted French citizenship, where he fell in love with the dazzling Mediterranean Sea and bright landscapes of the French Riviera.

Chagall’s work is perhaps best defined by the pre-eminence of light and color in his creations, leading some contemporary observers to suggest that the artist revolutionized how the public understands color as a medium for communication.

According to a statement from MAM, “color, in an aesthetic as well as a symbolic sense, is essential to Chagall, and architecture within the composition and a vector of spirituality. A thematic renaissance was also to take shape, where mythical beings, sirens, fish and radiant suns adorn his creations, providing a Mediterranean aura to the paintings.”

“Marc Chagall travelled a lot during his life but never went as far as Asia. My feeling is that, influenced by many cultures, he would certainly have enjoyed and appreciated Macau as I do,” said exhibition co-curator Ambre Gauthier. “Inspired by the Mediterranean atmosphere that one can feel in Macau, I decided to present artworks created during the 20 peaceful years he spent in the south of France.”

Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture Alexis Tam, who was not in attendance at yesterday’s inauguration ceremony, released a statement claiming that the exhibition would “continue to strengthen the already time-honored Sino-French friendship, while further enhancing Macau’s role as a platform for multicultural exchange.”

The exhibition will be open to the public, free of charge, until August 26. Cantonese-language guided tours are available every Saturday and Sunday afternoons from June 2 onwards. DB