After Mondrian, Chagall arrives at the Mudec, just a stone's throw away from Superstudio Più. "A tale of two worlds" exhibits more than 100 pieces of art curated by the Israel Museum of Jerusalem. On view is another Chagall: not the artist of the series “the lovers”, but the illustrator of Vitebsk and of private family memories, blending love and Judaism, is brought to light. Meanwhile, you can discover another legend on display: Henri-Cartier Bresson.

Undoubtedly a magnificent and not-to-be-missed exhibition. The Mudec discloses a private Chagall this time, the one that depicts his native village, Vitebsk (currently in Belarus), with winged charriots flying through the city's avenues in the background, and baggy skirted women walking with their umbrellas and hats down the roads. He shows us his house, a crooked hut, so miserable and crumbling that it looks as if it is going to collapse on itself along with the jewellry shop of (his lover) Bella Rosenfeld’s father. He takes us to their first meeting where a whirlwind of curvy and sinuous lines swallows them, the shapes twist, the outlines fade and mix. She looks at him while he paints: “you dashed at the canvas with such energy, it shook on the easel. He plunged his brushes into the paint so fast 'that red and blue, black and white flew through the air. You soared up to the ceiling. Will you be back yomorrow? Then together we floated up above the room with all its finery, and flew.”
  In a retrospective that also includes several Jewish ritual pieces, these are the symbols of the earth and the liturgy of the religious community, the traditions, and the feasts. In an ancient yet ironic dimension, Chagall leads us through the scenes of his family life inside the house of his grandmother, where his grandfather hides himself on the roof eating tzimmes, a sweet representative of Ashkenaz cuisine, during a family lunch. As in the 1940 illustration, Chagall's artworks also convey his fear for the pogroms: by representing this subject, he fills in the iconographic void in Judaism, that is the absence of a visual tradition. In the same way, he illustrates the Bible, one of the three great passions of his life, together with French and Russian literature. In 1923, Ambroise Vollard commissioned him to etch the Dead Souls by Gogol'. It results in the monocrome tableaux that accompany the most significant Russian Comedy of the XIX century. The gouache of La Fontaine's Fables are instead eccentric and colourful.

“Despite all the troubles of our world, in my heart I have never given up on the love in which I was brought up”
The last section of the exhibition runs under these words from Chagall’s biography. One painting in particular grabs our attention. The two lovers are depicted in the petals of the red flowers, the village of Vitebsk in the background, together with the red cock, the symbol of the passage between night and day, the violin, the divine instrument par excellence, and the horse. An angel is moving towards the two at the end, an enchanting symbol of hope.
The exhibition is completed by a multimedia installation of flowers manufactured in Cantù (Lombardy), gradually tinged with the vivid palette of Chagall's last works.