The National Marc Chagall Museum in Nice is not the largest of the Chagall museums in the world, but it is certainly one of the most colourful and impressive. Its peculiarity is that it was created with the active participation of the artist himself.
In 1966, Chagall settled in Saint-Paul de Vence, a tiny town two dozen kilometres from Nice. Behind shoulders were seventy-nine years of life, which included success in the former, old Russia, the revolution, a short leadership of the "affairs of art in Vitebsk province", drawing lessons for street children in Malakhovka near Moscow, departure to Lithuania, Germany, and then in France, European success, the crushing of France by the Nazis, flight to the United States, new success in the ocean, the death of his beloved wife Bella, return to liberated France.
In the sixties Chagall was already a recognised master. The government of Israel ordered him mosaics and trellises for the parliament in Jerusalem. On the artist fell orders for the design of many Christian churches and synagogues in Europe, America, Israel. He worked in Paris, bought a house in Saint-Paul-de-Vence and rebuilt it into a studio. In 1964, the artist was commissioned by de Gaulle to create a magnificent plafond for the Paris Grand Opera House. By this point, the French state had seventeen of Chagall's "Biblical Tidings" canvases in its possession, presented by him to the government. Culture Minister Andre Malraux proposed to create a Chagall museum in Nice and make these paintings the centre of the collection.
The city allocated a large plot of land with the ruins of an early-century villa for the museum. The project for the one-storey building was designed by architect André Hermann. Chagall himself thought in detail what should be the garden surrounding the building, determined the place of each painting, created mosaics and stained glass windows in blue colours for the concert hall.
The museum is dedicated to Chagall's religious insights - they were embodied in his gouaches with illustrations of the Bible (created in the thirties), a large collection of lithographs, sculptures, ceramics. Seventeen paintings illustrating the Old Testament are distributed in two halls. The first room contains twelve works in cool emerald-blue colours, depicting scenes from the book of Genesis and the book of Exodus. The second room contains five paintings in reddish colours, dedicated to the love lyrics of the Song of Songs. The exposition of the third room is constantly being updated.
The museum was opened in 1973 in the presence of the artist himself. At first, the collection was called "The National Museum of Marc Chagall's Biblical Message". The visitor is greeted by a magnificent garden conceived by Chagall himself - the Garden of Eden of his work: olives, cypresses, oaks and pines, flowers of cool white and blue tones. Everything as the master wanted, resting not far from here, in the small cemetery of Saint-Paul-de-Vence under a simple stone slab.
