From March 27 to April 6, 2023, Christie's presents Chagall and music. This online sale will allow amateurs and collectors to discover one fifty works never seen before on the market. Coming directly from the artist's studio via descendants, these works will in fact be offered for sale for the first time ever. Most of them are in a remarkable state of conservation. In Paris, around forty works on paper and around ten lithographs will be offered to collectors at attractive estimates, by 1.000 200.000 in euros. The opportunity to acquire a work by Marc Chagall, one of the most sought-after artists on the market in the Impressionist and Modern category. Most of the works exhibited in Paris were created during the second half of the artist's life, when he returned to France after his exile in the United States during World War II. Some are the work of an almost centenary Chagall but all reflect the "pictorial musicality" of the artist where the elements of his compositions dance, sing and articulate themselves in the pictorial space of the work, vibrating differently according to the colours, the games of light, the contrasts of overlapping or juxtaposing shapes and the subtlety of the means sought and used. The proposed selection therefore fully testifies to the incessant deployment and renewal of the creativity of an artist who, throughout his life, constantly reinvents himself through the richness of his pictorial vocabulary or his artistic technique.
Chagall and Music part of a series of sales led by Christie's, the first of which was held in London in June 2022 and the second in Hong Kong in December 2022, Marc Chagall, Color of Life: Works formerly from the artist's estate, for a total of €21 million.
The monumental work created for the Foyer of the theatre Commedia dell'arte Frankfurt, is made following 14 gouaches and several preparatory studies. Among these, seven unpublished preparatory studies are presented for sale for estimates between 4.000 and 30.000 euros. These works, which belong to the cycle of strong symbolism and reflection intended for post-war Germany, reveal in broad daylight the long working process of the draftsman and painter. Two other preparatory studies for works now in museum collections are also proposed, including a color study already very accomplished for Les gens du voyage (estimate: € 25.000 – 35.000) including the final canvas (1968) is at the Musée de Céret, deposited by the Center Pompidou-Musée national d'art moderni since its donation in 1988. This October, Christie's New York will in turn offer a body of works on paper celebrating Chagall's elaborate mastery of printmaking, including works dating from the 20s and 70s, including several rare, largely hand-coloured prints.
