Original lithograph published in 1960 by Andre Sauret in the first book of six on the lithographs of Chagall.
Printed by Mourlot, lithograph created after the original by Sourlier.
For Chagall, the medium of lithography did not come easily. Printer Fernand Mourlot ran a lithography press where Braque, Matisse, Picasso, Miró and Chagall came to have their designs printed and to learn about this still nascent print-making process.
Chagall used Charles Sourlier to create his lthographs, after months of failed attempts to produce his own.
Chagall himself was born of a family steeped in religious life; his parents were observant Hasidic Jews who found spiritual satisfaction in a life defined by their faith and prayer. In 1910, Chagall relocated to Paris to develop his artistic style where he enrolled at Académie de La Palette, an avant-garde school of art.
In 1914 he returned to Russia during which time he worked as a stage designer and art teacher, before returning to Paris in 1922.Marc Chagall’s dreamlike compositions depict aspects of the artist’s personal and family histories, and those of Eastern European folklore at large. Flying figures, elements of Jewish tradition, peasant life, and animals are frequent motifs.
Chagall’s practice—which spanned painting, printmaking, books, ceramics, and stained glass—was immensely influential in the development of 20th-century art: His supernatural subjects and emotional gestures bridged the work of earlier avant-garde movements such as Cubism, Fauvism, and Symbolism with later modernist styles such as Surrealism. Chagall’s career was disrupted by the World Wars, and while the artist moved between Russia, France, and the United States, he managed to exhibit widely during his lifetime both within the continent and in the U.S.
His work belongs in the collections of the National Gallery of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Art Institute of Chicago.
Chagall also produced stained-glass windows for Hadassah University Medical Center’s Abbell Synagogue in Jerusalem, the Saint-Étienne Cathedral in Metz, the United Nations building in New York City, the St. Stephen church in Mainz, Germany and All Saints’ Tudeley in Kent, which is the only church in the world to have all its twelve windows decorated by him.
