Marc Chagall Expo in Beaubourg, Paris, in 2024. Drawings, ceramics and sculptures 1945 – 1970. Temporary exhibition from 4 October 2023 to 26 February 2024 in Paris Beaubourg museum (centre Pompidou, Paris).

What I liked about this temporary Marc Chagall Exhibition in Paris

- Profusion of colors
- Inventiveness and creativity
- From initial hurried sketches through to the final preparatory study, offering unique insights into Chagall's creativity processes
- Donations of Marc Chagall's granddaughters, Bella and Meret Meyer to Centre Pompidou, integrating the permanent collection at Centre Pompidou (Beaubourg Museum) after the 26 February 2024.

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What I liked about this temporary Marc Chagall Exhibition in Paris
Marc Chagall At Work: Drawings, ceramics and sculptures 1945-1970 (temporary exhibition 4 October 2023 to 26 February 2024)
Igor Stravinsky The Firebird & Marc Chagall costumes’ inspirations

Etudes pour costumes pour L’oiseau de feu de Igor Stravinsky

Sketches for The Firebird’s backdrop from Marc Chagall
The Paris Opera House

Maquettes Préparatoires pour le plafond de l’Opera Garnier
Marc Chagall ceiling Opera Garnier

Marc Chagall sculptures and Ceramics

Marc Chagall Sculpture and ceramics

Marc Chagall Collage

Collages by Marc Chahal

Practical informations
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Marc Chagall At Work: Drawings, ceramics and sculptures 1945-1970 (temporary exhibition 4 October 2023 to 26 February 2024)

There are three themes to these donations.

Plans for costumes and backdrop for Igor Stravinsky’s ballet The Firebird performed by American Ballet Theatre in 1945
Sketches and models for the ceiling of the Paris Opera House, commissioned in 1962
A set of ceramics, collages and sculptures created from the 1950s through to the early 1970s.

Music was closely interwoven with his vocation as an artist and a source of inspiration and creativity.

Marc Chagall
“You have to make your drawings sing by using colour.”

Igor Stravinsky The Firebird & Marc Chagall costumes’ inspirations

The Firebird

In 1944, the recently formed American Ballet Theatre company decided to produce a new version of The Firebird. The costumes and stage sets were entrusted to Chagall, who was in exile in New York at the time.

Etudes pour costumes pour L’oiseau de feu de Igor Stravinsky

He drew inspiration from Russian folklore and Native American Kachina dolls, as previously in Mexico, for the ballet Aleko.

The first sketches for the costumes showed bodies in movement. During the many fitting sessions, the artist took great care to ensure a smooth fit according to each dancer’s morphology. Right up to the last minute, he was adding touches of colour to the costumes for them to fit in well with the backdrops.

Sketches for The Firebird’s backdrop from Marc Chagall

The Paris Opera House

In 1962, French Minister for cultural Affairs André Malraux asked Chagall to decorate the ceiling of the Opera House (known today as Opera Garnier). Despite the stirring of great controversy in the French and international press, often tinged with anti-semitism, and afurther to much pondering, Chagall submitted two large-scale mock-ups to Malraux the next year.

Mock-up of the Paris Opera House’ ceiling by Marc Chagall

The decor comprised twelve’s panels radiating out from a central circle.

Maquettes Préparatoires pour le plafond de l’Opera Garnier

The Painter initially envisaged his composition in terms of colour blocks, then defined a highly personal iconography.

Marc Chagall ceiling Opera Garnier

Chagall celebrated Charles Garnier’s architectural design, major musical creations studding the history of the Opera House and Paris in general, for which Chagall referred to his first impressions: “Things, nature, people, battered in the ‘light of liberty’ as if in a colourful bath”.

Marc Chagall sculptures and Ceramics

In the late 1940s, Chagall started producing ceramics, before moving on to sculptures. He was especially interested in bas-relief as a means to highlight the pictorial aspect of sculpture, using matter and light to reveal the motifs rather than colour.

Sculpture Marc Chagall in Centre Pompidou, Paris

His hybrid figures echoed the primitivism of the medieval tympanums and capital seen in Chartres and Vézelay in 1952.

Marc Chagall Sculpture and ceramics

His two trips to Greece in 1952 and 1953 piqued his interest in ancient times anew, as reflected in his Self-portrait which recalls the profile of a medal.

Marc Chagall Collage

From 1960 to 1970, Chagall produced several collage series. He had already used the technique in the 1910s and 1920s when preparing ballet sets and costumes. For this new research into plastics and colour, he contrasted shinny fabrics with matt gouache and played with volume using crumpled fabrics and plant matter.

Collage Marc Chagall

He glued fabric and paper to conjure up “mood boards”, sketch books in which to note inspirations for colours and matter effects used in decoration and fashion

Collages by Marc Chahal

Marc Chagall’s collages are a vibrant tapestry of imagination, blending dreamlike elements with his distinctive use of color and form. Each piece is a whimsical journey through his artistic universe, where reality and fantasy intertwine in a mesmerizing dance of creativity.

Thank you fore reading our article about Chagall artwork and exhibition in Centre Pompidou, Paris.