Apocalypse en Lilas, Capriccio

This apocalyptic gouache, ink and pencil study in grey and lilac was executed in April 1945 when Chagall was in exile in New York due to the Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War. Meret Meyer Graber, the artist's grand-daughter and representative of the Comité Chagall, has identified and translated Chagall's lightly written pencil titles in Cyrillic as 'Apocalypse' and 'Capriccio'. This was probably the first work that Chagall produced after coming out of mourning for his late wife, Bella (who had died suddenly in September 1944), and was created in direct response to seeing the horrors of the concentration camps revealed through newspapers and Pathé newsreels. Chagall biographer Jackie Wullschlager has described it as 'the bleakest of Chagall's many crucifixions': combining symbolism with realism and incorporating factual information about the Holocaust for the first time. The naked figure of Christ wearing phylacteries on his head and arm and a tallith (prayer shawl) flowing behind him, also combines male and female attributes in an hermaphrodite figure symbolizing both the male and female victims of the Holocaust; a bestial Nazi crouches at the foot of the cross. The grandfather clock in the top right of the study is missing its minute and hour hands, casting this moment in history as the end of time - the apocalypse. Below, a series of complex and horrific scenes uncover the extent of Jewish suffering during the Holocaust, among them another crucifixion, a hanging, skeletal victims of the camps amid burned buildings, and a boatload of refugees.

Apocalypse en Lilas, Capriccio was unveiled at a special exhibition to mark its acquisition, at Osborne Samuel in Mayfair in 2010, with a text by Professor Ziva Amishai-Maisels.