Offrande (livre Venturi)

Details

Marc Chagall (1887-1985)
Offrande (livre Venturi)
signed 'Chagall' (lower right)
brush and ink on paper
10 1/8 x 7 in. (25.7 x 18.1 cm.)
Executed circa 1940-1950

Provenance

David McNeil (the artist's son), Paris, by descent from the artist (no. D 2006).
Acquired from the above by the present owners in 1987.

Literature

V. Rakitin, Chagall, Disegni inediti dalla Russia a Parigi, Milan, 1989, p. 136 (ill. p. 137).

Exhibited

Milan, Studio Marconi, Marc Chagall, Disegni inediti dalla Russia a Parigi, May - July 1988; this exhibition later travelled to Turin, Galleria della Sindone, Palazzo Reale, Dec. 1990 - Mar. 1991; Catania, Monastero dei Benedettini, Oct.- Nov. 1994; Meina, Museo e centro studi per il disegno, June - Aug. 1996.
Hannover, Sprengel Museum, Marc Chagall, "Himmel und Erde", Dec. 1996 - Feb. 1997.
Darmstadt, Institut Mathildenhöhe, Marc Chagall, Von Russland nach Paris, Zeichnungen 1906-1967, Dec. 1997 - Jan. 1998.
Abbazia Olivetana, Fondazione Ambrosetti, Marc Chagall, Il messaggio biblico, May - July 1998, p. 30 (ill.).
Klagenfurt, Stadtgalerie, Marc Chagall, Feb.- May 2000, p. 58 (ill.).
Florida, Boca Raton Museum of Art, Chagall, Jan.- Mar. 2002.

Special notice

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price and at 15% on the buyer's premium

Lot Essay

This work is sold with a photo-certificate from David McNeil.

This is probably the most dynamic compositions and the most representative of Chagall's pictorial vocabulary within the present collection of Chagall drawings. One of Chagall's numerous swooning figures, carrying a bunch of flowers, flies above a small town possibly intended to represent Vitebsk. On the left is the artist, recognisable through his easel and paintbrush, who looks down at the town. He seems to waver between the human realm trapped in the semi-circle and the timeless world in the sky where the 'donor' is.

The present drawing is related to the etching L'offrande, chosen as the frontispiece of Lionello Venturi's book on Marc Chagall published by Galerie Pierre Matisse in 1945.

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