Bank of America is honored to sponsor Chagall: World in Turmoil, on view at Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, through February 23, 2023. While Marc Chagall (1887–1985) is most famous for his dreamlike images and radiant use of color, this expansive exhibition explores the artist’s use of a darker palette during a tumultuous period in European history.
Reflected in the more than one hundred paintings, works on paper and costumes created during the 1930s and early 1940s are the Russian-born Jewish artist’s personal experiences with the rise of fascism, antisemitism and Nazism.
Created during a period when he spent time in Israel, escaped Nazi-occupied France and eventually found refuge in the United States, Chagall’s paintings express recurring themes related to Biblical subjects, Jewish identity, his hometown of Vitebsk in present-day Belarus, persecution, flight and exile.
To shed light on a facet of Chagall’s lesser-known oeuvre, the Schirn Kunsthalle has brought together works on loan from numerous German and international museums and public and private collections. They include Kunsthaus Zürich, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris; Tel Aviv Museum of Art; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Smart Museum of Art, Chicago; Tate Modern, London; and Musée National Marc Chagall, Nice.
With support from the Bank of America Art Conservation Project (ACP) in 2012, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art conserved five paintings by Marc Chagall: The Musician with the Red Beard, 1919; Jew with Torah, 1925; Lovers, 1929; The Wailing Wall, 1932; and Solitude, 1933.