Jun 10, 2026
Marc Chagall is widely regarded as one of the great artists of the 20th century, alongside figures such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, whose work we exhibited last year at Curwen - one of our most popular exhibitions yet. Chagall was born in 1887 in the city of Vitebsk, Russia but spent much of his career in France. He developed a highly distinctive dreamlike style filled with floating figures, lovers, animals, musicians and scenes inspired by Jewish life, folklore and biblical stories.
Unlike many modern artists, his work is immediately recognisable and often very accessible to audiences because it is colourful, imaginative and deeply emotional. He wasn't just a painter. He worked across many art forms, including printmaking, book illustration, stained glass, theatre design and monumental public commissions. We have a selection of lithographs and etchings in our exhibition.
Some of his most famous works include the spectacular ceiling of the Palais Garnier in Paris and stained-glass windows created for churches and public buildings around the world. The exhibition includes a lithograph detail from the Paris Opera ceiling featuring Romeo and Juliet, linking one of his most famous commissions to a Suffolk audience.
Visitors will also see lithographs based on his celebrated "Twelve Tribes" stained-glass windows, which are among his most iconic religious works that also features the signs of the Zodiac, all framed in one large frame together as one artwork.
Chagall lived through extraordinary historical events, including the Russian Revolution and the Second World War, yet his art consistently celebrated imagination, memory, love and spirituality. He worked extensively in lithography, a process in which artists draw directly onto a specially prepared stone or metal plate before printing multiple impressions. Many of the works are signed in the plate, which was common practice in lithography and printmaking, where an artist would work on the plate and the highly skilled printers would produce the edition.
He loved lithography because it allowed him to achieve the same vibrant colours and fluid, dreamlike imagery seen in his paintings.
Chagall collaborated with the legendary Paris printing workshop of Mourlot, which also worked with artists such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. Many art historians consider his colour lithographs among the finest ever produced. Printmaking also helped spread his work to a wider audience, making original Chagall artworks more accessible than unique paintings. He died in 1985 at the age of 97
"People may know Chagall from major landmarks in Paris and New York, but this exhibition offers the rare chance to see and even own original works by one of the giants of modern art, right here in rural Suffolk."