Pamono Marc Chagall, Frontispiece: Invocation, from Odyssey, 1989, Lithograph> Surrealist

Frontispice / Frontispiece
Invocation (the Artist and the Poet Homer)
from “Odyssey”

colour lithograph on paper
publisher: Daco Verlag, Stuttgart
year: 1989
size: 377 x 295 mm
edition number: 288

Excellent Condition: complete image (no crop, no trim), wonderful colours

with Gallery Certificate

Catalogue Raisonné:
Meret Meyer and Patrick Cramer, “Marc Chagall, Les Livres Illustrés”, ref. # 96
Charles Sorlier and Fernand Mourlot, Chagall Lithographe, vol. V, ref. # 749
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Chagall and the Odyssey

“When Chagall approaches the subject of Greece he approaches it in the same way as life. He does not come to it as still life, but as to a living flesh of dream and memory” (Robert Marteau, quoted in: Mourlot, vol. V, p. 74)

Chagall first visited Greece at the invitation in 1952 and then again in 1954. Travelling with his new wife Vava, they visited Athens, Delphi, Poros and Olympia. Chagall immersed himself in the sights and sounds of this ancient culture, falling in love with the sea, the landscape and the light of the Peloponnese, sketching extensively to capture the charming countryside.

Chagall’s first major work to draw on another great classical poem, Homer’s epic The Odyssey, was a mosaic commissioned by the Department of Law at the University of Nice in 1967. His luminous mosaic interprets Odysseus’s arduous journey from the battlefields of Troy to his home of Ithaca as a parable for humanity, emblematic of the quest for freedom and the pursuit of justice which are exemplified by the triumph of the classical hero over temptation and adversity.

Chagall’s illustrations reveal his acute sense of narrative detail and his ability to evoke the atmosphere of the Mediterranean, saturated in myth and sunlight. In the words of the poet Robert Marteau:

“For Chagall, the gods are not dead…He tell’s us that man’s earth is not abandoned, that it is not an insignificant sphere roaming in the vastness of creation, but rather that it participates in that infinite grace which is diffused everywhere”.

(quotes by Robert Marteau from “Charles Sorlier and Fernand Mourlot, Chagall Lithographe, vol. V, p. 74 and p. 92)
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Important:

. The listing is for the original lithograph as listed
. The colophon with the edition number is shown for reference
. Sold with gallery certificate