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Lot Essay
This work is sold with a photo-certificate from David Mac Neil.
In this self-portrait, Chagall portrays himself as a circus master watching the animal's twisted acrobatics. Chagall draws his main features of the nose, eyes and mouth in a caricature-like style and with very few strong lines, enhancing them with the figure's dark hair and the suggestive lines which complete the portrait on the right.
Amongst Chagall's many self-portraits, the present one stands out as Chagall disguises himself not as an artist or an acrobat, but as a self-assured stage or circus director, preparing his show for the viewers, the exciting show of his own art, therefore underlying his self-confidence and his consciousness of his success.
By the 1930s, Chagall's reputation was already well established, his work having been exhibited in Moscow, Paris, Berlin, Cologne and Dresden, and he also founded the academy of arts in Vitebsk in 1918, to which he was much dedicated.
In this self-portrait, Chagall portrays himself as a circus master watching the animal's twisted acrobatics. Chagall draws his main features of the nose, eyes and mouth in a caricature-like style and with very few strong lines, enhancing them with the figure's dark hair and the suggestive lines which complete the portrait on the right.
Amongst Chagall's many self-portraits, the present one stands out as Chagall disguises himself not as an artist or an acrobat, but as a self-assured stage or circus director, preparing his show for the viewers, the exciting show of his own art, therefore underlying his self-confidence and his consciousness of his success.
By the 1930s, Chagall's reputation was already well established, his work having been exhibited in Moscow, Paris, Berlin, Cologne and Dresden, and he also founded the academy of arts in Vitebsk in 1918, to which he was much dedicated.