Exhibition at Kunstmuseum Basel explores the early work of Marc Chagall

Chagall—The Breakthrough Years, 1911–1919 brings Marc Chagall’s early oeuvre into focus. The exhibition was designed around the extraordinary ensemble of outstanding paintings by the French artist in the collections of the Kunstmuseum Basel and the Im Obersteg Foundation. Marc Chagall (1887–1985) found his way as an artist as his life was torn between two different worlds: his hometown of Vitebsk in Belorussia and Paris, where he lived between 1911 and 1914. The paintings he created during this period combine recollections of Russian provincial life with iconic fragments of the cosmopolitan French capital, incorporating reminiscences of Russian folk art as well as the most recent stylistic experiments he was exposed to through his acquaintance with many of the most progressive artists, including Pablo Picasso, Robert and Sonia Delaunay, and Jacques Lipchitz. Key works from the Paris years on display in the exhibition include