Woman on Bird, a plaque Chagall created in 1951, is one his earliest ceramic pieces. Featuring a female nude standing on the back of a white bird, it belongs to a series of plaques in a quite rustic and rudimentary style (Lovers on Rooster [Amoureux sur coq] (1951)). The vertical, hieratic composition distantly echoes the iconography of women on birds found in loubki1, and the same motif also appears on a large white plate with black and blue decoration, Nude With Raised Arms [Nu aux bras levés] (1953). The frontal composition and lack of perspective or background lets the yellow ochre enameled ground’s luminosity shine, evoking Novgorod’s Orthodox icons2. The startling contrast between the yellow ochre ground, revealing the underlying clay’s rough texture and unevenness, and the black design around the female figure and the bird, recalls other ceramics from the same period Goat and Rooster [Chèvre et Coq] (1952). Chagall applied white enamel highlights to the clay in the same way that white gouache highlights were applied to works on paper from the same period, pursuing the continuous dialogue between media3 at the heart of his work.
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Marc CHAGALL, Woman on Bird (Femme sur oiseau), 1951, grog, decorated with slips and oxides, enameled with brush, 12 1/8 x 8 1/4 x 0 13/16 in. (30.8 x 21 x 2 cm), Private collection © Fabrice GOUSSET/ADAGP, Paris, 2024