The Jewish Museum in New York will present Chagall: Love, War, and Exile which, for the first time in the U.S., explores a significant but neglected period in the artist’s career, from the rise of fascism in the 1930s through 1948, years spent in Paris and then in exile in New York.

Marc Chagall (1887-1985), one of the foremost modernists of the 20th century, created his unique style by drawing on elements from richly colored folk art motifs, the Russian Christian icon tradition, Cubism, and Surrealism. Beginning with the evocative paintings from his years in France, Chagall: Love, War, and Exile illuminates an artist deeply responsive to the suffering inflicted by war and to his own personal losses and concerns. Although he never abandoned a poetic sensibility, his art of the 1930s and 1940s reflects the political reality of the time. Most unexpected is the recurring appearance of the figure of the crucified Jesus as a metaphor for war, Jewish suffering and persecution. By the mid-1940s, Chagall returns to joyful, colorful compositions expressing the power of love. The exhibition includes 31 paintings and 22 works on paper, as well as selected letters, poems, photos, and ephemera.
Escaping the hardships of Soviet life following the Revolution, Chagall moved to Paris with his wife, Bella, and daughter, Ida. During this productive period, he assimilated the French artistic tradition, creating paintings of large scale floral bouquets, vibrant in color and texture.

Like many Eastern European Jews who had fled to France, Chagall’s world was threatened by the rise of Nazism. In 1941, with an invitation from Alfred Barr of the Museum of Modern Art, and the assistance of Varian Fry and the Emergency Rescue Committee, he and Bella escaped to New York City. With the onset of the war and this forced exile to New York, themes of violence and disruption characterize Chagall’s work.
The most prevalent image used by Chagall during World War II was of Jesus and the Crucifixion. In Chagall’s canvases Jesus was often depicted as a Jew. For the artist, Jesus on the cross was a symbol for victims of persecution, and an appeal to conscience that equated the martyrdom of Jesus with the suffering of the Jewish people. While other Jewish artists depicted the Crucifixion, for Chagall it became a frequent theme.
Unlike his years in Paris, Chagall was never completely comfortable in New York City. The artist felt disconnected from the places he understood best – Russia and Paris. This feeling of alienation was compounded by a devastating personal tragedy – the sudden death of his wife, Bella, in September 1944.
Chagall soon established a new relationship with Virginia Haggard McNeil, moving with her to High Falls, New York in the mid-Hudson Valley. His work from this time often expresses a tension-between the memory of Bella and the new presence of Virginia – resulting in fraught but revealing compositions. Gradually, as the artist emerged from his sadness, and the horrors of war receded, the work from this period begins to reflect a more familiar Chagall expressed in joy-filled paintings replete with intense color and levitating figures.
The show brings together significant works from major institutions and collections throughout Europe, Israel, South America, and the United States, and is comprised of four sections: Time is a River, War and Exile, The Jewish Jesus, and The Colors of Love. Among the exhibition highlights are: The Fall of the Angel, 1927-33-47, one of the largest easel paintings of Chagall’s career, expressing the human tragedy of those years as well as the painter’s existential anguish; Bella in Green, 1934-35, the artist’s last traditional portrait of his wife, Bella, made in Paris before the war; Time is a River Without Banks, 1930-39, a blending of personal recollections in unexpected, surreal juxtapositions; Study for the Revolution, 1937, a pictorial expression of Chagall’s disillusionment with the outcome of the Russian Revolution; The Juggler, 1943, representing various aspects of the human condition with the head of a cockerel, body of a man, and wings of an angel; Obsession, 1943, depicting the felled figure of Jesus on the cross, while a shtetl burns in the background; and Self-Portrait with Clock, 1947, an intensely autobiographical work revealing Chagall’s complex emotions of longing and loss following Bella’s death and the beginning of a new love. Also included is a sketchbook, begun by Bella in 1942 and, after her death, appropriated by Chagall. Exhibition visitors can see the actual sketchbook, and on nearby touchscreens view forty-three additional sketches.

Chagall: Love, War, and Exile is organized by Susan Tumarkin Goodman, Senior Curator Emerita at The Jewish Museum.

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