Customs offer a work by Marc Chagall, seized 20 years ago, to the Museum of Fine Arts in Besançon

Franche-Comté customs officially offered Monday The Acrobat on the violin by Marc Chagall at the Besançon Museum of Fine Arts and Archeology, reports Tuesday July 21 HERE Besançon. Seized at the Swiss border in 2006, the famous painter’s print had been lying dormant in customs depots for 20 years. This is the first time that the City Museum has exhibited one of his works.

During a road check at the Swiss border, “the work was seized by customs in 2006. The engraving was destined for Switzerland with other works of art, but it was not accompanied by documents justifying the State’s authorization allowing it to leave French territory”says Estelle Rocquelin, the regional director of customs in Besançon. Customs took the decision to offer it to the Museum of Fine Arts to strengthen the Bisontine heritage.

“Chagall’s characteristic motifs”

Marc Chagall engraved The violin acrobat in 1924 in Paris. It is a small engraving where we can see a man acrobat wearing a long beard and a hat. A strange animal plays the violin. “We clearly recognize Chagall with this somewhat dreamlike style, this dream world very detached from reality”explains Maël Vandewalle, curator at the Besançon Museum of Fine Arts, who authenticated the work.

Marc Chagall, born Moïche Zakharovitch Chagalov in 1887 in Vitebsk, Belarus, then an integral part of the Russian Empire, was inspired throughout his career by Russian folklore and Jewish tradition, like the violin on which the acrobat is perched. “The violin and the acrobat are also characteristic motifs of Chagall”underlines the curator. The Russian-born Jewish artist, known for The Violinist or even White Crucifixionobtained French nationality in 1937. He died in 1985 in Saint-Paul-de-Vence (Alpes-Maritimes).