Chagall, Lissitzky, Malevitch, the Russian Avant-Garde at Vitebsk - Centre Pompidou

As Centre Pompidou prepares to unveil its new exhibition of works by three major artists of the Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde, we are delighted to present Marc Chagall's remarkable gouache 'Vence ou Les amoureux à l'âne' from 1955. Painted in Vence along the French Riviera, this work is filled with the dreamlike and poetic motifs that defined Chagall’s practice. It also captures a new period of optimism in the artist’s life following his marriage to Valentine (Vava) Brodsky in 1952, shown here in the tranquility of the two lovers drifting between a beating red sun and crescent moon.

 

The exhibition devoted by the Centre Pompidou to the Russian avant-garde between 1918 and 1922 focuses on the work of three of its iconic figures: Marc Chagall, El Lissitzky and Kasimir Malevich. It also presents works by teachers and students of the Vitebsk art school founded in 1918 by Chagall: Vera Ermolayeva, Nicolai Suetin, Ilya Chachnik, Lazar Khidekel and David Yakerson. Through 250 works and documents never seen together before, this event sheds light for the first time on the post-revolutionary years during which the history of art was written in Vitebsk, a long way from Russia's big cities.

 

March 23, 2018