BETWEEN SKY AND EARTH: a unique exhibition by Marc Chagall opens in the New Jerusalem Museum near Moscow

The exhibition "Chagall: Between Heaven and Earth" opened in the New Jerusalem Museum near Moscow. The unique project presents 239 works of Marc Chagall, stored in museums and private collections of three countries - Russia, France and Belarus. In one space you can see the painting, graphics and tapestries of the artist.

Works for the exhibition were provided by the National Center for Arts and Culture, Georges Pompidou, the Marc Chagall Museum in Vitebsk, the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of the History of Jews in Russia, the National Museum of Marc Chagall in Nice, the New Jerusalem Museum and private collections .

The idea of ​​the exhibition is expressed by the words of Marc Chagall himself: "Painting seemed to me some kind of window through which I flew into another world." He claimed that he was “born between heaven and earth” and constantly resided in this “intermediate” space, understanding his existence in art and life, as being in a special dimension. For Chagall, there is no distance between the visible and the imaginary, between the subject and the symbol, between the concrete and the abstract, “he carries everything with himself” - as one of his key characters - a wanderer flying over the city with a bag over his shoulders, in which all his simple belongings. “Honestly, I am a man with one housing and a single picture,” the artist assured.

Therefore, his own world created by Chagall is theatrical in the Shakespearean style, although many of his contemporaries sought to avoid both narrative and theatricality in their work. In the Chagall Theater, “earthly scenes” and “heavenly scenes” are played, and “plays” are prayers and parables, poems and songs, tales and dreams, and other narrations that are consonant with the artist’s thoughts. The texts of these "plays" are written by the polyphonic pictorial alphabet invented by Chagall, which makes him one of the most famous modernists of the twentieth century.

“Shagal's characters are simply endowed with the gift of flying - like birds or angels. They are light, like happy love, weightless, like a dream, directed to heaven like a balloon. The sky for them is the same habitat as the earth. Chagall, and with him us, love transfers to other worlds, to distant and near cities, ”says curator Ekaterina Selezneva.

Meret Meyer, granddaughter of the artist, creator of the Marc Chagall committee: “We were subdued to learn that the New Jerusalem Museum was preparing to reveal to the Russian public a wide range of various artistic techniques used by Marc Chagall throughout his long career. This material fills him the works are “sparkling with color and truth.” We hope to once again catch the enchanted glances of the Russian public, studying the resonances of the Shagalov painting dictionary - these fountains of glances illuminate our life today. "

The exhibition exposition is built on two parallel lines - thematic and chronological. Together with Chagall, the viewer moves through three multidimensional spaces: “Earthly Life” (painting and graphics of the first quarter of the 20th century); “Travels and bridges” (works of the second quarter of the 20th century, connected with a trip to the Holy Land) and “Genesis of heaven” (works of the second half of the 20th century).

The exposition includes household items and religious goods from the MIEVR collection, luboks and tiles from the collection of the New Jerusalem Museum. Such artifacts could surround Chagall in his childhood and youth, meet him while studying in St. Petersburg and life in Moscow. The selection of these exhibits is not accidental; it substantially supplements and explains the origins of the artist's work - at the exhibition you can see how these real objects turn into images in his works.

The exhibition will be open until March 8, 2020.