For its fiftieth anniversary, the Maeght Foundation is lending, for the duration of a summer, “La Vie,” a masterpiece by Marc Chagall that he created in 1964. For this off-site presentation, the painting will engage in dialogue with the works in the museum’s collection, showcasing both the unity and the diversity of the artist’s sources of inspiration.
“La Vie” is the visual collection of motifs that continually permeated Marc Chagall’s work.
At the age of seventy-six, the artist imprinted on the canvas’s surface a maelstrom of images that punctuated his own artistic journey. Evocative rather than narrative, the composition concentrates intimate realities and universal subjects, sacred and profane themes.
Religious figures like Moses or the silhouette of a rabbi are alongside musicians, acrobats, dancers, animals, and hybrid beings. Artistic creation is celebrated here, with the depiction of the painter at his easel, as is romantic inspiration, with the presence of the muse and a married couple under a canopy.
In this universe between heaven and earth where bodies float, a Parisian landscape emerges. This memory of the French capital dear to Marc Chagall resurfaces at a time when the artist has been living in the South of France, in Vence since 1950.
His merchants and friends, Marguerite and Aimé Maeght, are also his closest neighbors. They originated the creation of a foundation dedicated to the greatest artists of the time in 1964, in Saint-Paul de Vence.
Marc Chagall contributed to the project by creating a mosaic that visitors discover at the entrance of the Maeght Foundation, as well as this large-format canvas, “La Vie”.
