One of our ways of surviving winter is looking at lots of works by Marc Chagall, whose black and white work allows us to marvel at his poetic vision of life and whose works in color cheer our spirits and replenish our faith in the coming of spring and new life after the gloom of winter. Our winter show this year will feature about 160 of Chagall's images drawn from our inventory of over 250 different Chagall works.

One of the most dominant artists of the 20th century, Chagall attempted to reshape the way we see and are seen. From his earliest paintings, depicting the ghettoized Russian Jews in their small villages not as prisoners but as free to explore the unknown world of their fantastic visions, to his last works, which meditate on the mysteries of love, artistic creation, and the joys of life, Chagall demonstrates the triumph of the imagination and celebrates its ability to free us from the constraints of daily life. Our current show will feature about 160 original etchings and lithographs dating from the time of Chagall’s return from the Soviet Union in 1922 to those executed close to the end of his extremely long and productive life. We feature a group of his early black and white etchings done at the instigation of Ambroise Vollard for Les Ames Mortes / The Dead Souls and The Fables, executed and printed in Paris from 1923 to 1927 for The Dead Souls (including one extremely rare hand-signed trial proof for one of The Dead Souls scenes) and between 1927-1930 for The Fables (including three hand-painted by Chagall) . In these works, Chagall says both farewell to Russia and hello to the technique of etching; the works vary between the loving if bittersweet emotions of his departure and his joyous discovery of his new medium. We are showing for the first time eleven 1948 etchings printed at the begining of each chapter of The Dead Souls; these pieces, published in an edition of only 368 impressions, will be offered at the special introductory price of Please call or email for current pricing information each until January 1, 2009. We are also including in the show the last page of the table of etchings from Les Ames Mortes which features a scene of Gogol reading a book while Chagall works at an easel on a portrait of Vollard, who commissioned the project but did not live to see it published for the first and only time in 1948. The show includes 36 of the etchings for The Dead Souls and 12 of The Fables, three of which were hand-painted by Chagall (edition 85) and one signed etching (edition 100) as well as 8 of the regular edition of two hundred which were neither signed nor hand-colored, 5 large-format color etchings done in 1957 for De Mauvais Sujets, and three larger-format pieces from later portfolios. The show also features groups of works illustrating the circus, his love affairs with Paris (including some lithographs he made in the 1952 and 1953 after his return from the U.S.), with lovers and artists, musicians, and dancers. Works dealing with Biblical themes represent a large portion of Chagall's oeuvre, and this year we will include 56 of them ranging from the etchings he did between 1930 to 1939 for Ambroise Vollard's proposed Bible–most printed in 1939 (including one gouache Chagall painted on one of the etchings as he worked out the color scheme for the hand-colored impressions to be included in the deluxe suite of etchings for the Bible; we also have available for viewing a few others which we could not fit onto the walls) but not published until 1956 after Chagall's flight from Europe and his postwar return; some completed and printed between 1952 and 1956. Also featured are selections from his sets of briliantly colored lithographs for Verve in 1956 and 1960 (others not on the wall will be available for viewing), 8 works from his portfolio of large-format lithographs on the theme of the Exodus, and several out-of-series works). We will also be showing for the first time two tampon sec scratch lithographs published in an edition of 10 signed and numbered impressions plus several signed HC impressions, two of which are included in our show. Not included in the show but available for viewing are the complete set of five etchings done in 1926-27 for Maternité as well as four of the etchings done in 1977 to accompany a volume of writings on the Spanish Civil War by his friend, Nobel-Prize winner André Malroux, several additional etchings for the Bible and lithographs for the Bible, the complete set of color lithographs after Chagall's final designs for the stained-glass windows in Jerusalem featuring the twelve tribes of Israel, and many other lithographs done between 1956 and 1981.