Chagall and I ! 50 years of the Marc Chagall national Museum

Anniversary exhibition
Chagall and I ! 50 years of the Chagall Museum

In 2023, we will celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the creation of the Marc Chagall national Museum with joy and colour. Inaugurated by the artist on his birthday, July 7, 1973, the museum, or rather the house that Chagall wanted to house the cycle of the Biblical Message, still carries a powerful universal message today:
"From my earliest youth I have been captivated by the Bible. It has always seemed to me, and still seems to me, that it is the greatest source of poetry of all time. […] The world is for me like a great desert in which my soul wanders like a torch, I made these paintings in unison with this distant dream. I wanted to leave them in this House so that people could try to find a certain peace, a certain spirituality, a religiosity, a meaning of life." ¹ 

To celebrate this generous gift, made 50 years ago, the exhibition Chagall and I ! invites contemporary personalities (artists, writers, dancers, musicians, etc.) to share their contemporary reading of these paintings. This Chagall and I ! exhibition will reveal many surprises and will be accompanied by a rich programme that will culminate on the weekend of 7 July 2023, the anniversary of Marc Chagall and the museum !

An exhibition in three parts

Part 1: from 28 January to 30 April 2023 
The guest artists are :

Asier Edeso, dancer and choreographer.
Born in 1986 in San Sebastián, Spain, Asier Edeso received his training in San Sebastián and Madrid, Spain (1994-2004), and then in London at the Royal Ballet Upper School (2004-2005). After collaborating with the Scottish Ballet in Glasgow and the Ballet de l'Opéra national du Rhin, he joined Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo in 2008, under the direction of Jean-Christophe Maillot. There, he performed a wide variety of works and roles from the classical repertoire (such as La Belle, Roméo et Juliette, Cendrillon, Shéhérazade, Faust, Casse-Noisette, etc.) as well as works that were added to the company's repertoire or created by guest choreographers for the Ballets (such as Le Fils Prodigue, Le Sacre du Printemps, New Sleep, etc.). 
For more information

Makiko Furuichi, visual artist.
Born in 1987 in Kanazawa, Japan, Makiko Furuichi grew up in a temple founded by her grandmother and governed by a communal life. She graduated from the Kanazawa College of Art in her hometown in Japan (2009) and later from the School of Fine Arts in Nantes (2011). As a visual artist, she explores themes of belief and spirituality through a multidisciplinary approach that combines painting, drawing, ceramics, and immersive environments. Guided by intuition and a mastery of technique, she creates a symbolic visual universe torn between beauty and grotesque, blending Eastern and Western cultures. Her work has the power to connect all forms of life together.
For more information

Mimosa Koike, dancer and choreographer.
Born in Tokyo in 1982, Mimoza Koike left Japan to study dance at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse in Lyon. She was initially recruited by the Grand Théâtre de Genève and then joined Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo in 2003, under the direction of Jean-Christophe Maillot, where she became a principal soloist. In addition to her virtuoso interpretation work covering both contemporary and classical repertoire, Mimoza Koike choreographs pieces performed in Monaco, France, and Japan. Since 2017, she has been the artistic director, alongside Asier Edeso, of "Pas croisés," a program of dance performances designed for the Chagall Museum in partnership with Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo. 
For more information

Stéphane Lambert, writer.
Stéphane Lambert is born in 1974 in Brussels. Being sensitive to the intricacies of creation and the possibilities of pictorial writing, he has dedicated several books to artists such as Nicolas de Staël, Mark Rothko, Paul Klee, Claude Monet, and Vincent Van Gogh. He received the André Malraux Art Essay Prize for his book Visions de Goya, l'éclat dans le désastre (2019), which explores the work of Goya, and was awarded the Roland de Jouvenel Prize by the Académie Française for his work Avant Godot (2016), where he explores the relationship between painting and writing. The theme of the intimate is also central to his autobiographical cycle, in which his book L'Apocalypse heureuse received the prestigious Victor Rossel Prize in 2022, a major literary award in Belgium.
For more information

Visit our YouTube channel to watch video interviews with artists by clicking on the image below.

Part 2: from 13 May to 4 September 2023
The guest artists are :

Serge Bloch, illustrator. For more information
Frédéric Boyer, writer, translator, publisher. For more information 
Jean-Claude Ellena, perfumer. For more information 
ilia Osokin, musician and composeur. For more information 
Keong-A Song, visual artist. For more information 

And with a special Anniversary Weekend on 7, 8 and 9 July 2023

Part 3: from 16 September to 8 January 2024
The list of future participants will be communicated later. 

¹ Marc Chagall, speech at the opening of the Marc Chagall national Museum, 1973.

View of the Biblical Message room, with paintings by Marc Chagall (from left to right): Noah and the Rainbow (1961-1966), Moses Receiving the Tables of the Law (1960-1966) and The Creation of Man (1958). Nice, Musée national Marc Chagall © Photo: Nice, musées nationaux du XX^e siècle des Alpes-Maritimes / Gilles Ehrentrant © ADAGP, Paris, 2023. 

Exhibition poster, figure from Marc Chagall's La Danse (1950, oil on canvas, 238 x 176 cm). Musée national d'art moderne - Centre de Création industrielle, Centre Georges Pompidou, on deposit at the Musée national Marc Chagall. Photo © RMN-GP / Gérard Blot © ADAGP, Paris, 2023. Graphic design: © Caroline Pauchant, 2023.