Ben Uri Pre-Eminent Collection

Apocalypse en Lilas, Capriccio

Artist information

Name Marc Chagall (1887-1985)

Other name Moishe Shagal, Moishe Zakharovich Shagalov

Born Vitebsk, Russia (now Belarus)

Died Saint Paul de Vence, France

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Artist Marc Chagall was born into a Jewish family in the town of Vitebsk, Russia (now in Belarus) on 7 July 1887. He attended a traditional Jewish school and a Russian high school, moving to St Petersburg in 1907, where he studied at the Imperial School for the Protection of the Fine Arts, and later at the Zvantseva School, led by Léon Bakst. In May 1911, Chagall arrived in Paris, where he enrolled at the Académie de La Palette and settled at La Ruche (the Beehive) studios in Montparnasse, mixing with other Jewish immigrant artists, subsequently known as the Ecole de Paris juifs, including Modigliani and Chaïm Soutine, as well as key figures in French modernism, among them Guillaume Apollinaire and Robert Delaunay. Chagall frequently used animals for symbolic purposes in his dream-like paintings that brought together aspects of French tradition with Russian folklore and Jewish motifs. His first solo exhibition took place at Der Sturm Gallery in Berlin, in 1914 and he returned to Russia to visit his family the same year. During his visit, the outbreak of the First World War prevented his return to Paris and following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, he was appointed Fine Arts Commissar for the province of Vitebsk. In 1922 he left again for Berlin, where his work was published by the periodical Der Sturm.

In 1923 Chagall returned to Paris, where he stayed until 1940, becoming a French citizen in 1937. He visited Palestine in 1931. Following the German occupation in May 1940, Chagall and his wife Bella remained in 'Vichy France', until one year later, with help from Alfred Barr of the New York Museum of Modern Art (who added Chagall’s name to that of prominent artists and intellectuals at risk), the American journalist Varian Fry and American Vice-Consul in Marseilles, Hiram Bingham IV, the Chagalls escaped to the USA on forged visas. They found refuge in New York, where Chagall remained for the rest of the war, however, after Bella's sudden death in September 1944, Chagall plunged into mourning and stopped painting until the following April when news of the Holcaust breaking through pathé newsreels compelled his artistic response. In 1946 a major Chagall retrospective was held at The Museum of Modern Art; he remained in America for a further two years before returning to France in 1948, and settling in the south-eastern town of Saint-Paul-de-Vence in 1952. In later life, Chagall produced the windows for the synagogue of the Hadassah Medical Centre in Jerusalem depicting the Twelve Tribes of Israel. He also accepted commssions for stained-glass schemes for the cathedrals of Reims and Metz, the Peace Window for the UN in New York (1963-64), and the windows in memory of Sarah d'Avigdor-Goldsmid at Tudeley chapel in Kent (1968-85). Marc Chagall died in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France on 28 March 1985. The Musée National Marc Chagall is in Nice and his work is in international collections all over the world including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme, Paris; and in the UK, the Ben Uri Collection, and the Tate, London.

Object Details

Date 1945-47

Object type painting

Medium gouache, pencil, indian wash ink and indian ink on paper

Materials and techniques gouache | ink | pencil (medium) painting (technique) paper (support)

Unframed 51.2 x 36.3 cm

Framed 76 x 61 cm

Signed (lower left): 'Chagall'

Acquisition acquired in 2009 supported by Miriam and Richard Borchard, Sir Michael and Lady Heller, and an anonymous donor, and benefitting from the advice of Lionel Pissarro and Art Fund

Accession number 2009-40

Display status On display in Chagall. Un grito de libertad (Chagall. The cry of freedom), Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid (2 Feb-5 May 2024)

This apocalyptic gouache, ink and pencil study in grey and lilac was executed in April 1945 when Chagall was in exile in New York due to the Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War. Meret Meyer Graber, the artist's grand-daughter and representative of the Comité Chagall, has identified and translated Chagall's lightly written pencil titles in Cyrillic as 'Apocalypse' and 'Capriccio'. This was probably the first work that Chagall produced after coming out of mourning for his late wife, Bella (who had died suddenly in September 1944), and was created in direct response to seeing the horrors of the concentration camps revealed through newspapers and Pathé newsreels. Chagall biographer Jackie Wullschlager has described it as 'the bleakest of Chagall's many crucifixions': combining symbolism with realism and incorporating factual information about the Holocaust for the first time. The naked figure of Christ wearing phylacteries on his head and arm and a tallith (prayer shawl) flowing behind him, also combines male and female attributes in an hermaphrodite figure symbolizing both the male and female victims of the Holocaust; a bestial Nazi crouches at the foot of the cross. The grandfather clock in the top right of the study is missing its minute and hour hands, casting this moment in history as the end of time - the apocalypse. Below, a series of complex and horrific scenes uncover the extent of Jewish suffering during the Holocaust, among them another crucifixion, a hanging, skeletal victims of the camps amid burned buildings, and a boatload of refugees.

Apocalypse en Lilas, Capriccio was unveiled at a special exhibition to mark its acquisition, at Osborne Samuel in Mayfair in 2010, with a text by Professor Ziva Amishai-Maisels.

Selected exhibition history

2010
Apocalypse: unveiling a lost masterpiece by Marc Chagall and 50 selected masterworks from the Ben Uri Collection
Osborne Samuel


2010
Cross Purposes: Shock and Contemplation in Images of the Crucifixion
Ben Uri Gallery


2012
Chaim Soutine and his Contemporaries - from Russia to Paris and School of London works from the Ben Uri Collection
Ben Uri Gallery


2013
Chagall, Soutine and the School of Paris: touring exhibition
Manchester Jewish Museum


2013
Chagall: Love, War, and Exile
The Jewish Museum, New York


2014
Marc Chagall, una retrospettiva dal 1908 al 1985
Palazzo Reale


2015
Out of Chaos – Ben Uri: 100 Years in London
Somerset House


2015
Chagall
Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium


2016
100 for 100: Ben Uri Past, Present & Future
Christie's South Kensington


2016
Art and the Holocaust
Ben Uri Gallery


2016
Out of Chaos: Touring exhibition
Laing Art Gallery


2017
Entartete Kunst (“Degenerate Art”) Remembered
Ben Uri (Online)


2018
Exodus: masterworks from the Ben Uri Collection
Bushey Museum


2018
Acquisitions and Long-Term Loan Highlights Since 2001
Ben Uri Gallery


2019
Art-exit: 1939 - A Very Different Europe
12 Star Gallery


2019
Friends and Influences: Auerbach, Freud, Kitaj, Kossoff, Bomberg; Chagall, Soutine, Marevna
Ben Uri Gallery


2022
Chagall: Welt in Aufruhr (World in Turmoil)
The Schirn Kunsthalle


2023
Art, Identity, Migration - Ben Uri at the London Art Fair
Business Design Centre


2023
Chagall: Welt in Aufruhr (World in Turmoil)
Henie Onstad Kunstsenter


2023
Le cri de liberté. Chagall politique (The cry of freedom. Political Chagall)
La Piscine


2024
Chagall. Un grito de libertad (Chagall. The cry of freedom)
Fundación MAPFRE


Literature

Ziva Amishai-Maisels, Apocalypse: Unveiling a Lost Masterpiece (London: Ben Uri Gallery, 2010), pp. 5-16; Jackie Wullschlager, Marc Chagall, Apocalypse en Lilas Capriccio in ed., Nathaniel Hepburn, Cross Purposes: Shock and Contemplation in Images of the Crucifixion (Mascalls Gallery and Ben Uri Gallery, 2010), pp. 42-44; Sarah MacDougall, ed., Soutine and his Contemporaries - from Russia to Paris (London: Ben Uri Gallery, 2012), pp. 12-14; Rachel Dickson and Sarah MacDougall, eds., Out of Chaos: Ben Uri - 100 Years in London (London: Ben Uri Gallery, 2015), pp. 102-103; Sarah MacDougall, Marc Chagall's Apocalypse en Lilas, Capriccio (Art UK in association with The Guardian, The Guardian, 12 April 2021).

Apocalypse en Lilas, Capriccio by Marc Chagall

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© The Estate of Marc Chagall

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Crucifixion
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