Octavio Ocampo

Discovery of America

After Marc Chagall (1887 - 1985) By Charles Sorlier (French, 1921-1990) "Bataille de Fleurs (Carnaval of Flowers)" (from Nice and the Côte d’Azur), 1967 Reference: CS 33 Color Lithograph Image Size: 24 7/16 in x 18 in (62 cm x 45.8 cm) Sheet Size: 29 9/16 in x 20 11/16 in (75 x 52.5 cm) Framed Size: approx. 34 x 27 inches Edition: Numbered 1 of 150 in pencil in the lower left margin and printed on Arches wove paper (aside from an edition of 75 signed and numbered in Roman numerals and 10 artist's proofs). Signature: This work is hand signed by Marc Chagall (Vitebsk, 1887 - Saint-Paul, 1985) in pencil in the lower right margin. Marc Chagall was a man of keen intelligence, a shrewd observer of the contemporary scene, with a great sympathy for human suffering. He was born on July 7, 1887 in Vitebsk, Russia; his original name was Moishe Shagal (Segal), but when he became a foremost member of the Ecole de Paris, he adopted French citizenship and the French spelling of his name. Vitebsk was a good-sized Russian town of over 60,000, not a shtetl. His father supported a wife and eight children as a worker in a herring-pickling plant. Sheltered by the Jewish commandment against graven images, the young Chagall never saw so much as a drawing until, one day, he watched a schoolmate copying a magazine illustration. He was ridiculed for his astonishment, but he began copying and improvising from magazines. Both Chagall's parents reluctantly agreed to let him study with Yehuda Pen, a Jewish artist in Vitebsk. Later, in 1906, they allowed their son to study in St. Petersburg, where he was exposed to Russian Iconography and folk art. At that time, Jews could leave the Pale only for business and employment and were required to carry a permit. Chagall, who was in St. Petersburg without a permit, was imprisoned briefly. His first wife, Bella Rosenfeld, was a product of a rich cultivated and intellectual group of Jews in Vitebsk. Chagall was made commissar for the arts for the area, charged with directing its cultural life and establishing an art school. Russian folklore, peasant life and landscapes persisted in his work all his life. In 1910 a rich patron, a lawyer named Vinaver, staked him to a crucial trip to Paris, where young artists were revolutionizing art. He also sent him a handsome allowance of 125 francs (in those days about $24) each month. Chagall rejected cubism, fauvism and futurism, but remained in Paris. He found a studio near Montparnasse in a famous twelve-sided wooden structure divided into wedge-shaped rooms. Chaim Soutine, a fellow Russian Jew...

"Orient Express" is a lithograph poster by Pierre Fix-Masseau. The artist signed his name in the lower right of the image. This piece depicts a fashionable woman smoking in one of the rooms of the Venice Simplon...

This striking Art Deco lithograph, created by renowned French artist Georges Dola in 1934, celebrates Franz Lehár's famous operetta Le Comte de Luxembourg (The Count of Luxembourg). ...

THis is a fabulous, Surrealist lithograph in bright fauvist colors by Hasidic mystic Boruch Nachshon It depicts jerusalem with King David and a menorah in a Jerusalem Landscape. Bar...