Touring: Apocalypse

Ben Uri was invited by Osborne Samuel to launch their 2010 exhibition programme at their gallery in Mayfair but the exhibition and catalogue had to change with the acquisition of the lost masterwork by Chagall, 'Apocalypse en Lilas, Capriccio'.

Chagall's Apocalypse en Lilas, Capriccio

The work by Chagall is the artist's private response to the end of the war, the Holocaust and the death of his wife Bella, most likely painted in March/April 1945. This work had never been recorded outside the archives and never exhibited or published till 2010.
 
Commenting on the exhibtion by Ben Uri, Chairman David Glasser said: "This acquisition is a triumph for scholarship and British ethics of hard work and determination. It would have been so easy to conclude that seven days was all too short for anyone to prepare a case and have the case for funding addressed by the Art Fund and the MLA/V&A Purchase Grant Fund.
 
"This previously unknown work is Chagall's deeply personal expression of horror and mourning for the Jewish civilisation almost wiped out by the Nazis alongside and merged with grief for his late wife Bella who died eight months earlier.

"The news of the mass genocide pouring through the media on the defeat of the Nazis appears to have been the stimulus to bring Chagall back to his easel after eight months of mourning.
 
"The Art Institute of Chicago, The Musee d'Arte Moderne, Paris, The Israel Museum and now Ben Uri in London are the four museums across the world that are custodians of this hugely important but tiny body of work where Chagall employs a Jewish Christ between 1938 and 1945.
 
"If the Jewish Community and London in general ever needed a reason to find an appropriate central London building for this extraordinary Jewish Museum of Art, with its national schools learning programs, its Artists' Development programs in education and social health, and its extraordinary exhibitions and collection, then surely this Chagall is surely it!"

Press coverage on the exhibition:

• The New York Times broke the news on 01.01.10
• Dominic Tobin in The Sunday Times, 03.01.10
• David Glasser on BBC Radio 4's Today Programme, 04.01.10
• The Spectator, 04.01.10
• The Evening Standard, 04.01.10
• The Jewish Chronicle, 04.01.10
• The LA Times, 04.01.10
• David Glasser on BBC World Service 'Europe Today', 05.01.10
• Jackie Wullschlager on BBC Radio 3 Nightwaves, 07.01.10
• BBC London News, 08.01.10
• Jackie Wullschlager in The Financial Times, 08.01.10
• Culture 24, 11.01.10