Philadelphia Museum of Art Shows "Paris Through the Window: Marc Chagall & His Circle"

Written by Natasha Gillespie Thursday, 20 October 2011 22:28

Philadephia.- "Paris Through the Window: Marc Chagall and His Circle" is on view at the Philadephia Museum of Art until July 10th 2011. The exhibition is focussed on the works of around eleven artistic émigrés. This includes 40 paintings and sculptures by Marc Chagall and artists like Alexander Archipenko, Marc Chagall, Moïse Kisling, Jacques Lipchitz, Louis Marcoussis, Amedeo Modigliani, Chana Orloff, Jules Pascin, Margit Pogany, Chaim Soutine, and Ossip Zadkine. As a symbol of culture, freedom, and modernity, the city of Paris held a magnetic attraction for artists from around the globe during the early decades of the twentieth century. Most painters and sculptors, as well as poets and writers, settled in a vibrant area of Paris known as Montparnasse, which was sprinkled with art galleries, artists’ residences, and cafés.

It was here that Alexander Archipenko, Marc Chagall, Moïse Kisling, Moïse Kogan, Jacques Lipchitz, Louis Marcoussis, Amedeo Modigliani, Chana Orloff, Jules Pascin, Chaim Soutine, and Ossip Zadkine established studios and discovered each other’s work. This exhibition includes more than 70 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper by these émigré artists and their French colleagues, all of which were created in a unique atmosphere of mutual encouragement and support in Paris during the early decades of the twentieth century. Interwoven throughout is the story of Chagall’s formative years in the French capital during the 1910s, his return to Russia during World War I and the rise of the Russian Revolution, and the artist’s triumphant return to Paris in the 1920s as a leading figure of the city’s thriving avant-garde.



It was in 1911 that Moishe Shagal, popularly known as Marc Chagall first arrived in Paris. Shortly after his arrival, Chagall assimilated rapidly the pictorial language of the most contemporary artistic styles of the day, especially Cubism, and married it with the artistic traditions of his native Russia. La Ruche, located on the southwestern fringe of Montparnasse in Paris, gave Chagall the much needed space to explore his creative instincts. The three-storey high building was developed by the French sculptor Alfred Boucher and soon became the hub for thriving artists across the globe, the rent being minimal. Chagall often used to describe the place as, "In La Ruche, you either came out dead or famous."

La Ruche provided a large population of Eastern European artists a much-needed platform to experience the vibrant artistic interchanges that made Paris such an attractive place to live and work as well as unparalleled exhibition opportunities. Among the other artists to live in or frequent La Ruche in the 1910's were Archipenko, Kisling, Lipchitz, Soutine, and Zadkine, who will be represented in the exhibition by two monumental sculptures in cedar wood that have not been displayed at the Museum since 1963.

Rising majestically at the end of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, the Philadelphia Museum of Art stands as one of the great art institutions of the world. In more than 125 years since its founding, it has grown far beyond the limits originally set for it. Historically, the Museum was a legacy of the great Centennial Exposition of 1876 held in Fairmount Park. In March 1873, an act of the Pennsylvania State Legislature set in motion plans for the construction of Memorial Hall to remain open after the Exposition as a Museum of Art and Industry "for the improvement and enjoyment of the people of the Commonwealth." On May 10, 1877, exactly one year after the inauguration of the Centennial Exposition, Memorial Hall reopened as a permanent museum. The Museum is beginning to move forward to dramatically expand the Neoclassical building overlooking the Parkway. Frank O. Gehry has been selected as architect for this 10-year master plan. The Museum is home to over 225,000 objects, spanning the creative achievements of the Western world since the first century AD and those of Asia since the third millennium BC. The European holdings date from the Medieval era to the present, and the collection of arms and armor is the second largest in the United States. The American collections are among the finest in the country, as are the expanding collections of modern and contemporary art. In addition, the Museum houses encyclopedic holdings of costume and textiles as well as prints, drawings, and photographs that are displayed in rotation for reasons of preservation. Visit the museum's wesbite at ... http://www.philamuseum.org

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