Kunsthaus Zurich presents presents Chagall. Modern Master, an exhibition on view from 8 February to 12 May 2013.
Marc Chagall, Over Vitebsk, 1922. Oil on canvas, 73 x 91 cm. Kunsthaus Zürich, gift of the Union Rückversicherungsgesellschaft Chagall ®/© 2012 ProLitteris, Zurich.
Featuring some 90 paintings and works on paper by Marc Chagall (1887–1985). Chagall is one of the best known and most popular artists of the 20th century. His images of Russian village life, floating figures, flying cows and roosters are world-famous. Now the Kunsthaus Zürich is dispelling some of the clichés on which his belated fame is based and recognizing his contribution to the avant garde.
The exhibition focuses on the years from 1911 to 1922 – a formative period in Chagall’s artistic career. It covers his sojourn in Paris before the First World War, his trip to Berlin and his exhibition there in 1914 at the Galerie Der Sturm, as well as the period spent in his native Russia, a country torn apart by revolution. These are the years in which Chagall establishes himself as a modern master. Unlike his contemporaries, he develops an art that articulates his Jewish and Russian culture and also enters into a dialogue with the visual languages of modernism – from Fauvism to Cubism and Orphism, from Expressionism to Suprematism. He combines these novel forms of painterly expression with his own imaginative motifs to create some of the most innovative and expressive works of 20th-century art. His experiences in Paris and elsewhere reinforce his highly personal and individual pictorial language and prompt him to create images that form the core of his art for the remainder of his career. The exhibition will trace this evolution.
Kunsthaus Zürich, Heimplatz 1, CH-8001 Zurich Tel.: +41 (0)44 253 84 84, www.kunsthaus.ch.