Gouaches, Marc Chagall, London: 1961 Number 68 of a Limited Edition of only 200 copies

17 pages + 10 plates (vol. size: 20 x 15 in.; 510 x 380 mm). Collotypes individually matted with mats bound in; artist's inscription in Yiddish and illustration in ink on half-title . Original half-cloth, artist's name printed in red on upper board and gilt-stamped on spine; foxing to boards and edges.

Gabriel Talphir- inscribed to him on the half title by the artist.

Signed by Marc Chagall, with a personalized inscription and drawing, to his friend Gabriel Talphir

Marc Chagall (1887-1985), left his birthplace in Vitebsk in 1910 to study in Paris where he began to assimilate cubist characteristics into his expressionistic style. After returning to Russia for several years, Chagall would spend most of his life in France. His frequently repeated subject matter was drawn from Jewish life and folklore and he was particularly fond of floral and animal motifs. Much of Chagall's work is rendered with an extraordinary formal inventiveness and a deceptive fairy-tale naïveté. Museums devoted to his work are found in Nice as well as in his birthplace, Vitebsk.

This magnificent copy of the limited edition of Chagall's Gouaches was personally signed by Chagall, and embellished with a charming pen and ink drawing of a tree, to Gabrial Talphir (1899-1989). An important and influential Israeli journalist and art critic, Talphir and his wife Rivka were friends of Chagall's. In 1932, Talphir founded the art and literary journal Gazith in which he published a mixture of prose, poetry, essays, reviews and illustrations of art and architecture.