EXODUS

Marc Chagall's life was marked by war and uprooting. The artist depicted the biblical exodus as an allegory of the persecution the Jews were subjected to with the Nazi invasion during the Second World War, a threat that forced the artist to flee from Paris to a forced exile in the United States.

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Chagall, in twenty-four scenes and in a very personal fashion, interpreted the exploits of the Jewish people who, with the help of their God and guided by Moses, escaped from slavery in Egypt to finally reach the Promised Land.

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Free from oppression, they became a group with an identity; free, and governed by their own laws, expressed in the Ten Commandments revealed by Yahweh to the prophet on the tablets he gave him on Mount Sinai.

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Many of the etchings in this series reproduce or are directly inspired by the gouaches Chagall completed on the Exodus in 1931. The biblical text had always attracted the painter, as it connected him to his deepest roots, his essence, his childhood in the Jewish community of Vitebsk, with his feeling of love and brotherhood and, at the same time, with his sense of exile. In this series of lithographs, Chagall once again showed himself to be a master of composition and colour.