Étude pour l'Opéra (1953)

Christie’s is delighted to present a fresh and captivating group of works by Mark Chagall formerly from the artist’s estate, showcasing the extraordinary fecundity of his imagination. The collection will be offered in the highly anticipated Impressionist and Modern Art Day and Works on Paper sale, taking place in London this March. Presented at auction for the first time since their creation, this selection of twenty works on paper spans a range of subjects and media, exemplifying the artist’s restless need to create.

Expressed through a pictorial language that is truly unique, the collection features a chimerical array of characters and motifs, including vibrant flower bouquets, emblematic animals, ethereal lovers, and tranquil landscapes. These dreamlike scenes reveal the full scope of his artistic ingenuity— they display Chagall’s incomparable ability to evoke profound memories and to suggest mystical connections between things, people and places, and to conjure emotions in the viewer in the process. Even monochromatic compositions are imbued with vitality— suffused, not by colour, but by the sheer joy of being alive.

Chagall’s body of work represents a timeless reflection on the human condition. Deploying his own paradigmatic pictorial vocabulary, a recurring litany of motifs and symbols, his œuvre represents the sanctity and vicissitudes of our shared humanity, balancing stark lines with bewitching bursts of colour. Fanciful yet poignant, jubilant yet nostalgic, his compositions speak to universal truths revealed by the unwavering power of love.

Through a poetic juxtaposition of personal symbols, Chagall would often entwine the motifs of flowers and lovers in his art, depicting resplendent bouquets alongside tenderly embracing couples. More than a still-life or an homage to the fertile French landscape, flowers, although themselves intrinsically ephemeral, embodied a profoundly moving gesture of love’s timeless power to transcend the everyday. They represented for Chagall not just the romantic love of his floating couples or maternités, but his reverence for love’s charm, and consummate goodness. Such themes prevail throughout this collection, echoing the artist’s celebrated œuvre.

Among Chagall’s most celebrated motifs are his amalgam representations of the places he called home. Reflecting on his birthplace from the security of his halcyon residence in the South of France, the artist would often fuse the verdant hills of the medieval French town of Saint-Paul de Vence and the rustic rooflines of his native Vitebsk, the fabled village which so often served as a backdrop to the tender portraits of lovers, artists, and musicians. At times embracing, playing their instruments, or animating a scene with humour, wit and warmth, these figures frequently perform as avatars for the artist himself.

Informed by an empathetic understanding of the human spirit and manifesting a peerless command over diverse media, Chagall’s work offers collectors an alluring combination of heart, spirit and fantastical otherness. The artist’s sheer passion and zest for life continue to inspire and delight, spellbinding lovers of art, both seasoned and new, from around the world.