The Monaco Masters Show:
Chagall & Léger, la couleur et la forme
Opera Gallery, Monaco
Through 31 August 2025
Opera Gallery presents ‘The Monaco Masters Show: Chagall & Léger, la couleur et la forme’ a masters exhibition with a special focus on MARC CHAGALL (1887–1985) and FERNAND LEGER (1881–1955).
With 2025 marking the 40th anniversary of Chagall’s death and 70th anniversary of Léger’s death, this exhibition explores the parallel experiences and respective influences of both Chagall and Léger. From their crossover within the avant-garde scene in the Montparnasse neighbourhood of Paris in the early 20th century, to their overlapping exile to the United States during WWII, to eventually settling as residents in the South of France (Fernand Léger in Biot and Marc Chagall in Vence and then Saint-Paul-de-Vence), the exhibition further explores how their time in France–where both artist’s formal artistic journeys began and ended–made an indelible influence on art history.
Notably, both Marc Chagall and Fernand Léger used colour to underscore their distinctive approaches to modernism. Léger’s work frequently celebrated the technological developments of modern life through the use of bold, flat primary colours and a graphic, stylised approach–emphasising his fascination with industrialisation. With cubism as a point of departure, Léger’s early interpretations of the avant-garde movement became known as “Tubism”– characterised by mechanical, often cylindrical forms. In Nature morte aux trois papillons,1952, even Léger’s depiction of nature and organic forms takes on a technical quality–rendered in bold colours, framed by black contour lines.
Alternatively, Chagall’s colour palette was more fantastical–with lyrical compositions evocative of dreams, nostalgia and the intangibility of emotion. In Chagall’s Le Peintre, 1976, the composition is divided into four distinct quadrants of colour–red, yellow, green and blue. An artist is depicted in the foreground, surrounded by figures and imagery of a folkloric nature–two lovers, a cityscape of Paris, a rooster–that appear simultaneously weightless, symbolic and fleeting. Here, Chagall uses colour as an emotive tool in his depiction of an artist surrounded by visions and memories of people, places and things.
At the core, both Marc Chagall and Fernad Léger’s work can be seen as a celebration of humanity’s enduring spirit, with Léger taking an idealistic view to the collective–framing the human figure as an intrinsic component of the modern, technological world. Conversely, Chagall’s work embraced tradition and symbolism, taking a more mystical lens to personal narratives in his paintings. ‘The Monaco Masters Show: Chagall & Léger, la couleur et la forme’ explores the broad range of existential themes that Chagall and Léger were exploring that continue to resonate today.
Additionally, the exhibition features a wider presentation of nearly thirty 20th and 21st century masterworks from artists including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Fernando Botero, Alexander Calder, George Condo, Niki de Saint Phalle, Jean Dubuffet, Keith Haring, Damien Hirst, Alex Katz, Yayoi Kusama, Roy Lichtenstein, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Pierre Soulages, Manolo Valdés, Andy Warhol and Tom Wesselmann.
OPERA GALLERY MONACO
1 avenue Henri Dunant, Palais de la Scala, 98000 Monaco
The Monaco Masters Show: Chagall & Léger, la couleur et la forme
Opera Gallery, Monaco, 4 July - 31 August 2025
