352. MARC CHAGALL. “L'envolée magique”.

Chinese ink and crayon on Japon nacré, 67.5 x 52.5 cm. Signed Chagall Marc. Performed ca. 1980

A copy of the certificate from the Comité Marc Chagall is included, issued by Jean Louis Prat, Paris 26/5 1994. Registered with Comité Marc Chagall, archive no. 94044.

PROVENANCE
Sotheby's, London 20 June 2013
Gallery Melefors, acquired by the current owner in 2021.

LITERATURE
Lithograph of the same title, 'L'envolée magique”, 1980, editions Maeght, Paris. in “Lithography of Chagall VI, p. 60-61.

When the outstanding work “L'envolée magique” was painted in 1980, the world in many quarters had begun to heal from the horrors of the war of the century, and people were striving to maintain peace. Marc Chagall had a rich life to look back on, with both happiness and great losses. With a belief in the invincible power of love, he had with his escapist art contributed hopes and dreams and would continue to do so. In the works of the auction, it is unmistakably Chagall's deft hand that invites us to a stunning soaring stage, filled with vibrancy and beauty.

Marc Chagall was born in 1887 as the eldest child of a group of nine siblings, in a Russian Orthodox home in the now Belarusian, then Russian, medieval city of Vitebsk. The father was a fishmonger and family life took place in simple conditions in an environment where time seemed to have stood still. The family was loving and Chagall, who had six sisters was overawed by warmth. The security from home and from religious identity, which held the people of the city together, would forever sit deeply rooted within Chagall.

At the age of twenty, Chagall went to Saint Petersburg to study art at the School of the Imperial Society of Arts under the direction of Nikolai Roerich. During his stay in the city he came into contact with modernism which in 1910 brought him to Paris where he settled in the legendary artist cluster “La Ruche”. Among the occupants were two of his future friends; Fernand Léger and Robert Delaunay. Despite the tendencies of the time in the direction of abstract painting, Chagall gravitated towards a different expression; in faunistically strong colors he was inspired by the mythical Parisian shimmer and dreams of his own.

Back home in the East, times were transformative. Chagall was drawn into the Russian Revolution, and the Soviet Ministry of Culture appointed him commissar of fine arts in the Vitebsk area. In 1914, he married the jeweler's daughter Bella Rosenfeld. Bella, who became his joy and life companion, henceforth had to symbolize love in his art- in embraces and unmistakable declarations of love. After yet another move to Paris, touching down in Berlin, he joined his friends and travelled around to operate in France. Chagall was now recognised, sought after and energetic.

Due to the persecutions of the Second World War, the family, which had grown, was forced to move to the United States in 1941. In the West, Chagall experienced a great success but also the painful loss of his Bella. After the end of the war, he soon returned to France and in 1952 married his second love, Valentina Brodsky, known as “Vava”, whom she too was given an exalted role in his life and circle of motives.

In “L'envolée magique” there is both the expanse of the firmament and a concrete foundation at the bottom, in the form of a house, probably Chagall's childhood home in Vibesk. A man, strikingly similar to the artist, with a hat and curly hair, half-lies with a harmonious expression on his face, stretching a bouquet of flowers towards a goat. The goat, which is recurrent in Chagall's pictorial sphere, can be traced in part to his Jewish heritage, where animals have been the living motif figured in the ornamentation of the culture. In the air above the tree, a man hovers in an acrobatic jump. An act from the magical world of the circus. The woman, gracefully flying above the earthly composition, is the exalted love. The Red Rooster - the alter ego of Chagall himself, is like the crown of the work. The rooster is seen in the animal world as robust and vital and in its position close to the female, the two are allied. A loving spectacle, in dance and painting, takes place before our eyes.

Despite the desire to interpret Chagall's works biographically, mysticism invites an individual experience. “L'envolée magique” is, as the title tells us, a soaring magic show in which there is a belief in the invincible power of love.