The work of Marc Chagall will transform the Jewish Museum of Australia into a timeless dreamscape in June.
The Jewish Museum of Australia: Gandel Centre of Judaica is bringing one of the great 20th century masters, Marc Chagall (1887-1985), to Melbourne.
The Museum will be transformed to a Chagall-inspired dreamscape from 9 June to 10 December 2023, including an exclusive capsule of original works and poems.
Chagall combines the Jewish folkloric painterly roots of his native Russia and the Parisian avant-garde, with fauvist, cubist and expressionist styles to create a highly personal visual language. In his works are universal themes of joy, love and melancholy.
CHAGALL is a nod to both the Jewish Museum’s first large-scale exhibition, held in 1995, which brought the famed artist to Australian audiences for the first time, and its inaugural director, the late Dr Helen Light AM. The exhibition will present and celebrate the Jewish heritage and identity that inform Chagall’s oeuvre, and is presented in partnership with Comité Chagall.
The son of an Orthodox Jewish labourer and shopkeeper in a harsh region of Russia (then the Pale of Settlement), Chagall grew up in an environment where going to school and studying art was a difficult path.
Some have determined that Chagall’s Jewish identity was crucial to his best work, including such pieces as The Flying Carriage (La calèche volante) (1913) and White Crucifixion (1938).
Read the article by Celina Lei in Arts Hub.