Growing up in the small town of Vitebsk (in present-day Belarus) as the eldest child of an Orthodox Jewish family, Chagall reflected on his origins throughout his life. His paintings tell of everyday life and customs, but also of ostracism and pogroms. They deal with the trauma of persecution, but also with the dream of a better life. 

The exhibition aims not only to show the influence of avant-garde painting on Chagall’s early work. It is also about discovering the lesser known dark and critical sides of the artist, which are still relevant today. The dreamlike worlds that Chagall created in his paintings were not only poetically charged fairytales. They also contained biting criticism of the social conditions of the time. 

Throughout his life, Chagall combined his motifs with his personal experiences. In the works created between the 1960s and the 1980s, he also reflected on the stages of his life and reacted sensitively to social developments and world events as a whole. Vitebsk and Paris increasingly became places of longing, and Christ, the crucified Jew, a symbol of suffering. 

The exhibition is a collaboration between the ALBERTINA Museum, Vienna, and the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf.

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• The Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen is supported by

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