Poetry in Painting – Graphic Works by Chagall and His Contemporaries

The painter-poet Marc Chagall is among the great masters of twentieth-century art. kunsthalle weishaupt is devoting an
exhibition to him and further artists from his Paris circle, with around 90 graphic works from 1920 to 1970.
When seen together, these works show how differently artists approached the medium of prints for their own specific forms of expression. The exhibition includes very colourful series of images as well as minimalist sketched prints full
of wit and spontaneity.

In the mid-1960s the collector Siegfried Weishaupt acquired his first work of art – Marc Chagall’s portfolio ”Daphnis and Chloe”. Fascinated by the 42 high-quality colour lithographs, he had laid the foundation of a passion for collecting that continues to this day. Marc Chagall‘s illustration of the classical love story “Daphnis and Chloe”,
which was published in 1961, presents itself as a festival of colour and pictorial narrative art. Set on the Greek island of Lesbos, “Daphnis and Chloe” is the story of two foundlings who discover their love for one another.

“Regards sur Paris” is the title of the second portfolio presented in full in this exhibition. For this, a number of artists including Georges Braque und Kees van Dongen each made three or four lithographs based on various texts by French writers. This portfolio invites visitors to an encounter with the glittering nightlife of Paris. Scenes at the picturesque banks of the Seine alternate with dreamy views of the Eiffel Tower and impressions of bohemian Montmartre.

All of the works in this exhibition take a dreamy and idealistic perspective on their chosen subject: fiction and reality, nostalgia and fantasy merge into poetical worlds and images.

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