For Vava - Marc Chagall
Archival giclée
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Description
A dreamlike 1953 portrait by Marc Chagall, depicting his wife Vava alongside a spectral golden horse in a nocturnal setting.
Marc Chagall painted For Vava in 1953, a period marked by his marriage to Valentina 'Vava' Brodsky. This work captures the dreamlike, personal iconography that defines his later career. The composition features a central female figure, Vava, rendered with a pale, ethereal complexion that contrasts against the dark, nocturnal background. She holds a bouquet of white flowers, a recurring motif in Chagall's work that often signifies love, memory, and the fleeting nature of time.
To the left of the figure, a golden, horse-like creature emerges from the shadows. This animal presence is characteristic of Chagall's visual language, where figures from his childhood in Vitebsk merge with his adult experiences in France. The horse appears as a protective or spectral companion, its textured, gilded surface providing a tactile counterpoint to the smooth, melancholic expression of the woman. A thin crescent moon hangs in the upper right corner, grounding the scene in a celestial, night-time setting.
Chagall employs a deep, moody palette dominated by midnight blues, blacks, and ochre tones. The application of paint is layered, creating a sense of depth and mystery. The figures do not occupy a realistic space, but rather a psychological one, where the boundaries between the human and the animal, the real and the imagined, remain fluid. This piece reflects the artist's preoccupation with themes of devotion and the spiritual connection between lovers. It is a quiet, intimate work that avoids the grandiosity of his public commissions, focusing instead on the private emotional world he shared with his wife. The painting remains a clear example of his ability to synthesise folklore, personal history, and modernist abstraction into a singular, cohesive vision.
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Each print is produced to order using 12-colour giclée printing on FSC-certified archival paper. Designed in Britain and printed at your nearest production hub to reduce waste and speed up delivery.
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Specific Features
Every Solis piece is made to order with archival, gallery-quality materials built to last.
- Museum-grade giclée printing for rich, fade-resistant colour
- Archival matte fine-art paper, FSC-certified
- Multiple sizes and framing options available
- Frames in black, natural wood, dark wood or white
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- Dust gently with a soft, dry cloth
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Materials & Sizing
Museum-grade giclée on FSC-certified archival matte paper, with framed and canvas options.
- Paper sizes: A4, A3, A2, A1, A0 and B2 (50×70 cm)
- Canvas: XS (20×30 cm) to Large (60×90 cm)
- Frames: black, natural wood, dark wood or white
For Vava - Marc Chagall
Artist Biography
Marc Chagall
He was born Moishe Shagal in 1887, in the Pale of Settlement, the restricted zone where Jews were permitted to live in the Russian Empire. His father worked at a herring warehouse. The family was devout Hasidic. After studying in St Petersburg, he went to Paris in 1911 and immersed himself in the Fauvists and Cubists, absorbing their formal innovations without abandoning the narrative imagery of his childhood. The colour and the dreamlike floating figures were already there in Vitebsk. Paris gave him the structure.
He met Bella Rosenfeld, the daughter of a wealthy Vitebsk jeweller, and married her in 1915. She became his primary subject for the next three decades. The flying lovers that recur across his work, gravity-defying couples suspended above rooftops and villages, began with Bella. When she died of a streptococcal infection in New York in September 1944, penicillin existed but the entire supply was reserved for soldiers. He stopped painting for nine months. He continued to paint her memory for the remaining forty-one years of his life.
Picasso once said that when Matisse dies, Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what colour really is. The friendship ended at a dinner at Chagall's home in 1964. Picasso asked when he was going back to Russia. Chagall replied: after you, I hear you are greatly loved there but not your work. They never spoke again.
His late stained glass commissions are among the strongest work of his final decades: the Peace Window at the United Nations, the twelve windows representing the Tribes of Israel at the Hadassah Medical Centre in Jerusalem, and windows at Metz Cathedral. In 1964, Andre Malraux commissioned him to paint the ceiling of the Paris Opera, a decision that provoked fury from critics who objected to a Russian-born Jewish artist working inside a French Baroque monument. He lived to ninety-seven.
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