Delicate and intimate, Chagall’s etchings for this suite were made in 1976 when he was 89 years old at the very end of his life. They were published in an edition of 225 only, one of the artist’s last and most personal works.
Published by Maeght, Chagall illustrated the words of the French poet Louis Aragon for this suite of 25 etchings with aquatint. Aragon was one of the founding members of the Surrealist movement which swept through the art world in the early 1920s.
Aragon’s poetry was strange and diverse, often swaying between the lyrical and the overtly political. The title of Chagall’s series – ‘Those who speak without saying anything’ – highlights the satirical bent to Aragon’s poetry, but also the key surrealist concept of unconscious action: ‘speaking’ without ‘saying’.Coloured etching with aquatint.

Chagall was born in Vitebsk, Russia in 1887. After studying in St Petersburg he went to Paris where he befriended the avant-garde circle of artists. In 1917 he returned to his native Vitebsk where he was made Director and Commissar of Fine Art. However, his fantasy-based work irked the conservative authorities so he left for Moscow to design for the new Jewish Theatre.
Returning to Paris in 1923 he met the art-dealer Vollard for whom he illustrated Gogol’s Dead Souls and the Fables of La Fontaine. Between 1941-47 he moved between occupied France and the USA, eventually settling near Nice. Chagall was a prolific artist, his work reminiscent of Jewish life, bible stories and of the folklore from his early years in Russia. He died in 1985.
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