São Paulo opens exhibition dedicated to Marc Chagall

On the ground floor of Banco do Brasil Cultural Center (CCBB), in downtown São Paulo, two large colorful fabrics float in the air. With a breath of air, they dance across the floor of the building and sometimes even reach the highest floors, as if they were flying.

The contemporary work called Air Fountain, by Daniel Wurtzel, was installed there to dialogue with the new exhibition in the space: Marc Chagall, Dream of Love, opened on Wednesday (Feb.8), it can be visited until May 22.

The fabrics in Wurtzel's piece of work seem to symbolize "the perfume and the rose", in the poem Seoul est Mien, written by Chagall (1887-1985). The poem was translated into Portuguese and placed on one of the walls of the exhibition, which also includes an animation art located in the basement.

"This sensation of lightness, this abstract vision of love represented by the two dancing fabrics is a relationship that we had proposed to artist Daniel Wurtzel to dialogue with Chagall's work. So, the idea was to welcome the public into this environment of enchanting and delight and make them feel this love that defies the force of gravity," the organizer of the exhibit Cynthia Taboada explained.

Updates

Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, and Brasília have already hosted Marc Chagall exhibition, which now reaches São Paulo. It includes 191 pieces of art by the French Russian artist of Jewish origin produced between 1922 and 1981, 12 of which had not been shown in previous itinerant exhibitions.

Among them is the book Maternité, by surrealist writer Marcel Arland (1899-1986), which was illustrated with five metal engravings by Marc Chagall. The book is part of the collection of Brazilian writer Mário de Andrade (1893-1945), the first collector of the artist's works in Brazil.

The artworks The bride and groom with sled and red rooster (Les mariés au traîneau et au coq rouge) and Springtime (Le Printemps), from the collections of Casa Museu Ema Klabin and the Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo, have also been lent especially for this exhibition in São Paulo.

Among the highlights of the event are also the very rare gouache The miser who lost his treasure (L'avare qui a perdu son trésor), a production that kicked off the graphic series of La Fontaine's Fables (Fables, Jean de La Fontaine), commissioned by Ambroise Vollard in the late 1920s and printed only in 1952. The hand-colored engravings from the Bible series are also part of the exhibit.

Poems

The visitor will also be able to see some of the poems written by Chagall, an artist who was devoted to love. "We did a "transcriation" of the poems because we do respect the rhythms, the tempo, the transit between languages. This was very well respected by an artist named Saulo di Tarso. We took a 1968 edition, which gathers poems by Chagall from 1909 to 1965, and all of them were "transcriated", translated into Portuguese in an unprecedented way. This is something new that we are displaying in this exhibition," Cynthia Taboada explained.

Public dance performances, a scenic-musical intervention and a cycle of debates and lectures will also be offered to the visitors.

"This is a rare exhibition, which brings Chagall's legacy - a great set of pieces of art and a lot of poetry," CCBB-SP general manager Claudio Mattos said.