The anticipated Chagall and the Russian Avant-Garde exhibit has debuted at the Art Gallery of Ontario this week. Flown in from Paris’ Pompidou Centre, it features 118 works of the Russian avant-garde artists that were chartering into the realm of abstraction and wild experimentation with color during a time of war and revolution.
The exhibition takes viewers step by step through Chagall’s life-long career, incorporating context of his other Russian contemporaries such as Kandinsky, Malevich, Goncharova, and Tatlin along the way. It begins with Chagall’s youth in Vitebsk, a town central to his influences, and culminates in his monumental circus series. “Blue Circus,” the “poster boy” for the exhibition, can be viewed in the last section of the exhibition.
The exhibition wonderfully displays both the Russian avant-garde’s love for traditional Russian folk culture as well as its collective progression and response to Russia’s Revolution and its new social outlook. Treat yourself and see it before it returns to Paris in January. Greater appreciation and understanding of Chagall, the “master of color,” is a guarantee.
