Printer: Mourlot (1 of 3,000 editions) 

Dimensions: 80 x 56 cm

Condition: Very good condition

Frame: Oak and charcoal 

Description: By 1969, Marc Chagall was one of the world’s best-known living artists, yet his work had lost none of the imagination that had made him famous. This original lithographic poster was published for his winter exhibition at Galerie Maeght in Paris and reproduces Le Fond Jaune (The Yellow Background), one of his most recognisable late paintings.

Rather than telling a single story, Chagall fills the composition with floating lovers, animals and symbolic figures, inviting each viewer to make their own connections. However dreamlike they appear, these images grew out of memories of his childhood, Jewish folklore, the Bible and the people he loved, themes that remained at the heart of his work throughout his life.

Printed by the Mourlot studio in Paris, the poster beautifully captures the richness and colour of Chagall’s original painting. It reflects an artist still working with remarkable freedom in his eighties and remains one of the finest posters from his long association with Galerie Maeght.

Artist: Marc Chagall (1887-1985) was a Russian-French-Jewish painter, book illustrator, ceramicist, stage-set designer, tapestry maker and undoubtedly one of the most influential modern artists of the 20^th century. He was also an unparalleled colourist. In 1954, Picasso said, ‘When Matisse dies, Chagall will be the only painter alive who understands what colour really is.’

Most artists would begin the lithograph process with a black outline and then load subsequent plates with several colours to produce a clean coloured image. But Chagall would pour layer upon layer of colour into plates to create lithographs so dense in paint that they resembled paintings.

In 1948, Chagall, aged 61, was an internationally successful artist. He had lived through two world wars, the Russian Revolution and witnessed constant persecution of Jewish people. He had escaped occupied France with his family to live in New York during World War II but had returned to Paris a widower and in search of new beginnings. He teamed up with Charles Sorlier, one of the master lithographers at Mourlot studios and began to experiment. Chagall wrote several years later in 1960: ‘When I held a lithographic stone or a copperplate in my hand I thought I was touching a talisman. It seemed to me that I could put all my joys and sorrow in it…Everything that touched my life through the years, births, deaths, weddings, flowers, animals, birds, the poor workers, my parents, lovers in the night, the biblical prophets on the street at home, in the temple and in heaven. And as I grew older, the tragedy of life within us and around us.’

Chagall worked right up until his death in France in 1985, aged 97. He was the last surviving master of European Modernism.