Chagall: Colour and Music

The Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal presents until June 11, Chagall: Colour and Music. This show is the biggest Canadian exhibition ever devoted to Marc Chagall (1887-1985). Featuring 340 works of art and a large selection of documentary works, including films, photographs and musical excerpts, this multidisciplinary exhibition is the first to focus on Chagall's profound connection to music in his life and work. Through this original approach, the exhibition demonstrates how all of Chagall's work, from his paintings, works on paper, costumes, sculptures, ceramics, stained glass and tapestries to his creations for the stage and his large-scale decorative and architectural projects, were imbued with musicality. The layout of this major exhibition is both chronological and thematic, covering all the periods of the artist's long and productive career – his years in Russia, his Parisian period, his exile in New York, his time in Mexico and his life in the South of France. Many of the galleries feature a musical accompaniment, and the exhibition includes films, slideshows and an incredible projection of the famous ceiling of the Paris Opera, which Chagall completed in 1964. This close-up view allows us to appreciate the splendour of this monumental decor and view details that are normally not visible to the naked eye. The ceiling of the Paris Opera and the murals of the Metropolitan Opera in the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York (1966) embody the concept of total art that was so important to the artist.