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Lot Essay
The Comité Marc Chagall has confirmed the authenticity of this painting.
In Chagall's art the imaginative world takes precedence over literal reality and his paintings are colored by his dreams. Personnages sur fond rouge et jaune is an example of Chagall's mature oeuvre and it contains many of his characteristic visual repertory: animals, mother and child, and the ubiquitous fiddler. These characters are seen floating in an unreal space imagined with hues of red and yellow. The composition has an illusory quality that defies close interpretation and relies on the power of color, rather than content, for its primary impact. As Franz Meyer noted: "the juxtapostion of totally different motifs provided the inspiration for a unity based on spatial order of color" (F. Meyer, Marc Chagall, New York, 1963, p. 594). Throughout his career Chagall's work is characterised by lightness and lyricism. The vibrancy and the monochromatism in the present painting is reminiscent of his work in stained glass, a medium which was to occupy an increasingly important role in his oeuvre following his commission in 1956 for the baptistery in the Chapel of Notre-Dame-Toute-Grace in Assy, France.
In Chagall's art the imaginative world takes precedence over literal reality and his paintings are colored by his dreams. Personnages sur fond rouge et jaune is an example of Chagall's mature oeuvre and it contains many of his characteristic visual repertory: animals, mother and child, and the ubiquitous fiddler. These characters are seen floating in an unreal space imagined with hues of red and yellow. The composition has an illusory quality that defies close interpretation and relies on the power of color, rather than content, for its primary impact. As Franz Meyer noted: "the juxtapostion of totally different motifs provided the inspiration for a unity based on spatial order of color" (F. Meyer, Marc Chagall, New York, 1963, p. 594). Throughout his career Chagall's work is characterised by lightness and lyricism. The vibrancy and the monochromatism in the present painting is reminiscent of his work in stained glass, a medium which was to occupy an increasingly important role in his oeuvre following his commission in 1956 for the baptistery in the Chapel of Notre-Dame-Toute-Grace in Assy, France.