Marc Chagall

Morton-Hamill, New York
Private Collection (acquired from the above; sale: Sotheby's, Paris, 1st June 2011, lot 18)
Private Collection, Switzerland (purchased at the above sale; sale: Sotheby's, New York, 6th November 2013, lot 50)
Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

Executed on fibrous grey wove paper, laid down on Japan paper and floating in the mount; the Japan paper is hinged to the mount at the upper two corners. There are two pin holes to the upper and lower right corners. There is a small tear to the centre of the upper edge and possibly a few further obscured nicks around the extreme edges, all stabilised by the laying down process. There are some fine lines of paint shrinkage visible to the areas of thickly applied white gouache and a few tiny associated flecks of paint loss in places. The colours are fresh and this work is in overall good condition.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Executed in 1911 when Chagall had only just settled in the heart of Montparnasse in Paris, La Fuite perfectly demonstrates the dramatic shift in the artist’s creative output of this period, grandly defined by Surrealist writer André Breton as a ‘total lyrical explosion.’ As one of the few Russian-Jewish artists in Paris during this period, Chagall approached his work with a unique combination of folkloric narratives and formally daring compositions that rivalled those of his French contemporaries. The subject in this picture, for example, is a modern derivation of the Biblical story of the Exodus, rendered here as a woman fleeing a deconstructed village beneath a sky lit with Stars of David. A unique element of this work is the use of the starry sky as a symbol of the artist’s Jewish culture but also as an aesthetic and poetical element used as a compositional tool to balance the entire scene. "No other artist in the Parisian avant-garde of the early twentieth century explicitly depicted scenes from the Torah or Genesis vis-a-vis the cubist formal principles of fragmentation and deconstruction," Jean-Michel Foray wrote. "To put it another way, at the precise moment when the avant-garde was moving away from figuration, narrative compositions, and genre painting in favour of formalism and abstraction, Chagall reintroduced traditional themes and religious subject matter. This decision, though defining for Chagall, represented the beginning of a deep rift between the artist and the avant-garde" (J.-M. Foray, Marc Chagall (exhibition catalogue), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2003, p. 64).