Marc CHAGALL (1887 - 1985) [FRANCE / RUSSIA] - Lot 30

Marc CHAGALL (1887 - 1985) [FRANCE / RUSSIA] L'Écuyère ou Cirque, 1952 white clay, decorated with engobes and oxides, underglaze drypoint engraving. Illegible "Madoura Plein feux" stamp on reverse. 4.7 x 39.5 cm Unique piece Registered under Ref C.184 of the digital catalog raisonné of Marc Chagall's ceramics. Certificate to be paid by the buyer. We would like to thank the Comité Chagall for the information it provided on this work. Provenance: Purchased in 1952 at the Galerie Maeght, during the exhibition "Céramiques Sculptures et Les Fables de la Fontaine". In the same year, the ceramic dish was given as a wedding present to the current owner's parents, and has remained in the same family ever since. Exhibition : Marc Chagall: Céramique, sculptures et les fables de la Fontaine, galerie Maeght, Paris, March 21, 1952 - April 20, 1952 Bibliography: -Charles Sorlier, "Les céramiques et sculptures de Chagall", Edition Sauret, 1972, n°136, ill. page 157 -Sylvie Forestier - Meret Meyer "Chagall e la ceramica", Milan Fig 252, n°133 p 169 -Sylvie Forestier - Meret Meyer "Les céramiques de Chagall", Paris,1990, fig 252, page 169. - "Marc Chagall et les revues d'art, De couleur et d'encre", Publication Director GAUTHIER, Ambre (cat. exp., Nice, Musée national Marc Chagall, October 10, 2020 - April 26, 2021), Paris, RMN-Réunion des Musées nationaux, 2020, fig. 6, ill. p. 17. The circus first appeared in Chagall's work in 1913, in a drawing entitled L'Acrobate. After the First World War, the art dealer Ambroise Vollard, who had a dressing room at the Cirque d'hiver, regularly invited the artist to visit and commissioned a series of gouaches to illustrate a book on the circus. The book never saw the light of day, but Chagall nevertheless produced a set of 19 gouaches that bears the name Cirque Vollard. Once again in the 1950s, Chagall's work expresses his admiration for clowns and acrobats, and emphasizes the closeness of circus performers. CHAGALL AND CERAMICS Since 1946, Picasso has been practicing ceramics at the Ramié couple's Madoura studio in Vallauris. In 1949, Matisse added a ceramic decor to the Chapelle de Rosière in Saint-Paul-de-Vence. Dealers encouraged famous painters to take up ceramics, such as Aimé Maeght, who supported Joan Miro's collaboration with Les ateliers Artigas. In 1949, Chagall moved with his wife to Vence, where he acquired a house called "Les Collines". The presence of other artists in close geographical proximity and this Mediterranean context were undoubtedly also important for the painter. For all of them, the traditional boundary between major and minor art is abolished in favor of a creative approach that explores all materials. From 1949 to 1972, Chagall created 220 unique pieces (plates, tiles, plaques and vases) with the help of the Ramié couple, who opened their studio to him. Chagall took up subjects previously dealt with in painting and engraving: La Fontaine's Fables, the circus, a cycle on Parisian monuments (1952-1954) and Le Message Biblique, 17 large-scale paintings depicting episodes from the sacred books Genesis, Exodus, Song of Songs and the New Testament. Chagall sometimes coated the colored clay with a white enamel, which he decorated with oxides, and he also used engobes engraved with a knife before the final covering. In the mid-fifties, he demonstrated his originality by creating shaped pieces decorated with sumptuous colored motifs. L'ECUYERE ou LE CIRQUE (1952) The two actors are part of a circular composition imposed by the shape of the dish, which also evokes the roundness of the ring. The arabesques of the rider's arms and the supple lines of the animal's body correspond plastically. The object shimmers with the colored oxides beneath the crystalline glaze, applied to a colored engobe clay. The artist has delicately incised the glazes with a stylus. Chagall takes up a theme widely explored in his paintings, gouaches and engravings. With his supple drawing and enamels in enchanting colors, Chagall is undoubtedly suggesting the theme of desire here: the robust horse, leaping forward, ostentatiously turns its head towards the fragile dancer. Our ceramic is closely related to a later gouache "L'Écuyère au Cheval Rouge" circa 1970 (donated by Meret Meyer, 2022), which recently entered the collections of the Musée National d'Art Moderne. This information is based on the book "La Terre est si lumineuse-Chagall et la céramique". Ed. Gallimard, catalog of