Chagall at work. An exceptional loan to the museum

In 2022-2023,Bella and Meret Meyer, granddaughters of Marc Chagallallowed the entrance of cent-quarante-and-a works of their grandfather in the national collections by doingseveral exceptional donations to the National Museum of Modern Art, Centre Georges Pompidou. Originally shown in Paris in 2023-2024, the ensemble of works joined the cimaises of the Marc Chagall National Museum where it is presented in two parts. He testifies to the richness and diversity of Chagall's creation and offers a journey in four sets.

The forty-one sketches and models for the ceiling of the Opéra Garnier, inaugurated in 1964, illustrate the process of creating one of Chagall’s most ambitious public orders. He first imagined his composition in terms of colourful rhythms, and then joined an iconography that paid tribute to the great composers he admired and to the city of Paris where he settled in 1923.

A second set brings together the sixty-four sketches stage curtains and ballet costumesL’Oiseau de feuon the score of Igor Stravinsky, taken over by the Ballet Theater in New York in 1945, choreographed by Adolph Bolm, then in 1949 by George Balanchine. Here, Chagall experiments with monumentality in his painting and the movement of bodies on stage.

Finally, the twelve ceramics and sculptures, then the twenty-fourcollages,reveal the artist’s constant curiosity for new artistic practices in the 1950s to 1970s. The work of earth and stone began in 1949 when he settled in Vence and met Serge Ramel, Suzanne and Georges Ramié and Lanfranco Lisarelli. Later, between 1960 and 1970, he developed the practice of collage of paper and cut fabrics. The artist considers them both as studies for monumental projects or as pure formal research.

Exhibition organized in two parts, with a rotation of works, from February 7 to May 17, 2026, and from May 23 to September 21, 2026.

ommissariat:
Anne Dopffer, curator general of heritage and director of national museums of the twentieth century of the Alpes-Maritimes
Grégory Couderc, curator of heritage at the Marc Chagall National Museum

Exhibition carried out with the exceptional participation of the Centre Pompidou.

Exhibition open daily, except Tuesdays,from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 2.30 p.m. to 5 p.m., from 7 February to 30 April 2026
Thenfrom 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 2:30 to 6 p.m., from 2 May to 21 September 2026.

Museum closure on May 1, 2026
The ticket sales stop 30 minutes before the museum closes.