June 29, 2018
Chagall, The Decisive Years
The Guggenheim Museum delves into one of the most interesting periods of the Russian artist.
The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao will present until the 2nd of September the exhibition “Chagall. The decisive years, 1911-1919 “, centered on the early years of the Russian painter in Paris. The exhibition includes more than 80 paintings and drawings belonging to the beginning of his career, where Chagall experiments with abstract and geometric shapes, colors and movement, reflecting his own daydreams.
Born in the small town of Vitebsk, after living in St. Petersburg for some time, Marc Chagall decided to move to Paris in 1911, where a decisive break in his art took place. For three years Chagall created sets of works that combined Russian folk art and references to his Jewish family culture with stylistic elements of the avant-garde Parisian vanguards, inspired by acolytes like Pablo Picasso or Sonia and Robert Delanunay.
In 1914 he returned home to attend his sister’s wedding but, after the outbreak of World War I, he was confined there for eight years. During this stage Chagall immersed himself in a stage of self-search, reflected through self-portraits, daily representations of his family, drawings about the ravages of war and representations of the new Russia.