Art Talk: "Marc Chagall: Memory as Resistance"

The museum joins the program promoted by the City of Venice to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day, on January 27, with a free presentation about Marc Chagall.

The talk will be in Italian and is free with museum admission.

Marc Chagall (born Movcha Chagall in 1889 in Vitebsk, Belarus) lived in Paris at the beginning of World War II. As a member of the Hasidic Jewish community, many of his artworks were confiscated from German museums by the Nazi regime after 1937 and designated as “degenerate art”. Despite this, Chagall continued to experiment with different subject matters, often including elements of Jewish heritage and memories of his homeland in his work. When Nazi troops advanced on Paris, Chagall fled to the south of France, intent on leaving Europe. He was one of many artists who visited Villa Air-Bel in Marseille, a refuge provided by the Emergency Rescue Committee, an association run by Varian Fry and supported by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, among other institutions. With their help, Chagall reached the United States on June 22, 1941, the same day Nazi troops invaded the Soviet Union. The painting Rain from 1911, inspired by Chagall’s native Vitebsk, was acquired by Peggy Guggenheim in 1941 in New York.