Marc Chagall
Fundamental Paintings to Understand the History of Painting
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The Bride and Groom of the Eiffel Tower (1938-39). Marc Chagall.
Oil on canvas. 150 cm x 136.5 cm
Pompidou Center. Paris. France
In the 20th century, the history of painting changed radically and this painting is a perfect example to synthetize it.
Artists no longer faithfully represented the world around them, the external world (broadly speaking “nature”) and painted expressing their own vision of the world, influenced by their spirits, their feelings and moods.
That is why we can say that the art of the 20th century is, in general, Expressionist.
Chagall said that “great art picks up where nature ends.” And his work illustrates this concept clearly. It is so personal that the artist cannot be categorized in any movement and is included in the School of Paris which was a very heterogeneous group of painters with only something in common: they lived in Paris during the period between the two world wars.
His art has that air of innocence of popular art. A world full of love (in this painting the couple are himself and his wife, Bella Rosenfeld) and of happy childhoods, a world irradiating joy and optimism through intense color (an evident reaction against the horror and despair the world experienced during the first half of the 21st century).
Due to all that lyrical poetry in his work some people define Chagall as “the greatest poet among painters.”
Recommended links:
The Fundamental Difference Between the Absurd and the Magical Realism.
Fundamental Painters of The School of Paris.
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