Chagall’s Daphnis & Chloé at the AGA: Making the Everyday Iconic

Chagall’s Daphnis & Chloé at the AGA: Making the Everyday Iconic

By Becky Rynor, National Gallery of Canada on October 29, 2013

Click on images to enlarge! Images are copyright of their respective owners, assignees or others

Chagall, Marc, The Trampled Flowers (c. 1956–61, printed 1961

In 1956, Marc Chagall—then almost 70 years old—began a commission to illustrate Daphnis and Chloé, a famous, classical fable about a young goatherd and shepherdess on the Greek island of Lesbos, written by the second-century Greek poet, Longus. Chagall spent the next five years creating forty-two coloured plates to visually narrate the twists and turns in this tale.

The exhibition Chagall: Daphnis & Chloé is a captivating love story, a peek into Marc Chagall’s personal life, and a lithographic opus considered to be the artist’s most important graphic work.

“They are incredible works of lithography,” says Kristy Trinier, curatorial liaison at the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton, where the series—on loan from the National Gallery—is on view until 16 February 2014... more

Visit our Daphnis & Chloé page