AXTMANBRILLA
is brought by
BRILLA CONSULTING GMBH & CO.KG, GERMANY
in collaboration with
MARKETING & CONSULTING DI GIULIA KASCINA, ITALY
This 13 pages long cycle is one of the most beautiful lithographic series which has been created by Marc Chagall. It was based on the stories of one of the great treasures of world literature « Stories of Thousand and One Nights « known to us as « Arabian Nights » as well, that at Chagall’s time was very popular among educated Russians.
Those 1001 stories, originated in India as early as 250 A.D., and later mixed with Persian, Egyptian, and Arabian stories, modified by Greek, Hebrew and Babylonian influences, have an exciting background: Sultan Shariar, deeply disappointed by his unfaithful wife, sentenced her to death. He believed that such unfaithfulness is common to all women and was looking for cruel revenge. He ordered his vizir to bring him every night a beautiful virgin who was sentenced to death after having spent just one night together with him. Scheherazade, the vizir’s daughter, could terminate those terrible sacrifices of beautiful women. When she spent the first night with the Sultan, she started to tell him exciting stories and stopped at the end of the night at a particularly suspense part of each story, so that the Sultan couldn’t wait for the next night to hear the continuation of the story. Finally, after 1001 nights, he showed mercy and left her alive. The content of the stories are the dangers and adventures to achieve fulfillment of wonderful wishes.
Using beautifully colored lithographies, Chagall, the poet among the painters, found a medium to implement his imaginations into graphic art. For this series he created 13 colored lithographies, printed by Albert Carman, and for the first time issued as a folder of just 111 copies by Panthon Books (New York) in 1948. The current series of 333 copies has been issued as a special edition in the year of Chagall’s death. So, he couldn’t sign them. The editor provided his embossed signature instead. Perfect condition, mounted on acid-free passepartout, some of the lithographies are framed (wooden frame with golden collour), some have been never used.
Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall was a Russian artist, born in Belarus and later (1937) naturalized in France. He is one of the most celebrated artists of the 20th century.
He had an unique career working with various artistic media, incl. paintings, frescoes, book illustrations, stained glass, stage sets, ceramics, tapestries and fine art prints. Chagall's exciting, extraordinary and poetic work is still achieving universal attention and of everlasting cultural importance. The art critic Robert Hughes called him "the quintessential Jewish artist of the 20th century." Chagall is a pioneer of modernism and one of the greatest figurative artists of all time. He created some of the best-known and most-beloved paintings of our time. According to the art historian Michael J. Lewis, Chagall was considered to be “the last survivor of the first generation of European modernists.” For decades he “had also been respected as the world’s most visible Jewish artist.” He also accepted many non-Jewish commissions, including a stained glass work at the cathedrals of Reims and Metz, Dag Hammarskjold memorial at the United Nations, and the great ceiling in the Paris Opera.
His most vital work was made on the eve of World War I, when he traveled between St. Petersburg, Paris, and Berlin. During this period he created his own mixture and style of modern art based on his visions of Eastern European Jewish culture. He spent his wartime years in Russia, and the October Revolution of 1917 brought Chagall both opportunity and peril. By then, he was one of the Soviet Union's most distinguished artists and a member of the modernist avante-garde. He founded the Vitebsk Arts College, which was considered the most distinguished school of art in the former Soviet Union. However, Chagall was considered a non-person by the Soviets because he was Jewish and a painter whose work did not celebrate the heroics of the Soviet people. As a result, he moved to Paris together with his wife, and never returned to his home-country Russia.
