Chagall

Chagall lithograph exhibit at Zack

Susanna Strem, owner of Chali-Rosso Art Gallery, in front of a Marc Chagall lithograph. (photo by Olga Livshin)

Marc Chagall needs no introduction. But perhaps not everyone is aware that there is a gallery in Vancouver that specializes in original graphic works by Chagall, as well as a few other 20th-century European masters.

“We opened the gallery in 2005,” Susanna Strem, owner of Chali-Rosso Art Gallery, told the Independent. “Since then, I always wanted to have a Chagall show at the JCC. I was familiar with the community and liked it. When I first immigrated to Canada and arrived in Vancouver, I often went there.”

Now, she finally will have her wish. On Sept. 15, she is bringing her selection of Chagall’s lithographs to the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver.

Strem considers herself not just a gallery owner but also an art educator. She is passionate about art and she longs to share her passion and her knowledge. She often discusses multiple aspects of the arts with gallery guests and she loves answering their questions. A recurring question concerns the nature of lithographs.

“Not everyone realizes that lithographs are original works by the artists,” she explained. “First, the artist creates an image on a stone block and then he transfers it on paper. It’s a time-consuming process and, after the artist makes a set number of copies, the stone image is destroyed. It is called a ‘limited edition.’ A limited edition could consist of 50 or 100 copies, or however many the artist had decided upon, but each copy has a number and is signed by the author. They are all originals, and that’s what we sell in our gallery. That’s what we’ll be bringing to the Zack.”

Lithographs, or prints on paper, while originals, are not unique. Consequently, they are more affordable than other works by the same artist.

“Some people, when they think of art at all, they think oil on canvas,” Strem mused. “But most artists create in different media. Creative minds always try something new and interesting. Salvador Dali, one of the artists we represent, created many amazing sculptures. Pablo Picasso worked on pottery. Both Picasso and Chagall enjoyed printmaking. When we first decided to open the gallery, we knew we wanted to represent graphic works on paper because of their relative affordability, compared to the oils. Oil paintings by Chagall could go for enormous prices, but a lithograph by Chagall could cost only a couple thousand dollars.”

Strem started her professional life far from the artistic field. She was born in Hungary and studied art history and computers in Budapest. After graduating from university, she worked as a software developer and IT consultant for many years, first in Hungary, then in several European countries and, for a short spell, in Israel. None of those places suited her for long.

“Europe has too much history and culture; it’s too heavy a burden. That’s why Canada, and specifically Vancouver, work for me,” she said. “It is a new world here, it is lighter, more accepting.”

In 1994, Strem settled in Vancouver and resumed her work with computers. For the first decade she lived here, she worked as an IT specialist, until the moment came when she knew it was time to embark on a new career.

“When my husband and I opened the gallery, it was a big change. It would have been impossible in Europe. People there don’t switch careers: once an engineer, always an engineer. If I decided to open a gallery in Europe, after being an IT person for years, everyone would look at me and think something was wrong with me. But it was OK in Vancouver.”

Chali-Rosso first opened on Granville Gallery Row – a short strip of Granville Street between Broadway and the bridge – where many major Vancouver galleries still reside.

“Art collectors knew to come there if they wanted some art,” she explained. “It was the right place to open a new gallery.”

A couple years ago, after their collection quadrupled in size, they moved the gallery to a new and larger facility in downtown Vancouver, on Howe Street.

They chose the name Chali-Rosso for their gallery because of the artists that comprise the majority of their collection: four European masters of the first half of the 20th century.

“The gallery name is an acronym of their names: Marc Chagall, Salvador Dali, Joan Miro and Pablo Picasso,” said Strem. “We focus on these four, although we have some works by other artists, too, including a small but wonderful piece by Rembrandt.”

For Strem, opening a gallery on the West Coast is a challenge.

“I like Vancouver, like living here,” she said, “but it’s not easy for any art gallery to engage people’s attention. Western Canada is still too new, too young. Most people are attracted more by the outdoors than by art. To spend $300 on bicycle gear is fine, but $800 on a piece of art is too much. There is no centuries-old tradition here, no art on the street. In Europe, people are surrounded by art, but here, art is not an integral part of life. It’s up to us, gallery owners and artists, to change the situation here. We’re pioneers.”

Marc Chagall’s Bible Suites opens at the Zack on Sept. 15, 7 p.m., with a reception to which the public is invited. The exhibit runs until Oct. 26.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].

Overlapping exhibits

“Girl with Flower” by Esther Warkov, 1964, acrylic on canvas. (WAG collection; gift of Arthur B.C. Drache, QC, G-98-296; photo by Leif Norman)

Russian-born Jewish artist Marc Chagall (1887-1985) was a modernism pioneer. So much so that Pablo Picasso proclaimed that, when Henri Matisse dies, “Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what color really is.”

In the early 1920s, Chagall left Russia for Paris. In 1941, he escaped France and reached safe haven in New York. He returned to France a few years after the end of the Second World War.

“This sense of displacement Chagall feels throughout his life is reflected in his works, often featuring characters who hover over the earth…. Even if they’re lying down, they’re sort of levitating,” said Andrew Kear, Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG) historical Canadian art curator. “There’s a sense of rootlessness to his work that’s quite interesting, and it’s reflected in his later work, too. By the 1940s – an important time for Chagall – he loses his first wife, his first love really, Bella, to cancer in or around 1944 … and is absolutely distraught.”

In an exhibition overseen by Kear, WAG has brought in the exhibit Chagall: Daphnis & Chloé from the National Gallery of Canada (NGC). It will be in Winnipeg until Sept. 11.

The exhibit, the latest NGC-WAG collaboration, features 42 lithographs, widely considered the crowning achievement of the artist’s career as a printmaker. The series depicts the semi-erotic tale written by the ancient Greek poet, Longus. Through fanciful compositions and bright hues, Chagall expresses the pastoral idylls of the young goatherd Daphnis and the young shepherdess Chloé on the island of Lesbos.

At WAG, there is also a complementary mini-exhibit called Chagall & Winnipeg, which tells the little-known tale of friendship between Chagall and former WAG director Dr. Ferdinand Eckhardt through letters, photographs and works of art.

image - Marc Chagall, “The Trampled Flowers / Les fleurs saccagées” (detail), circa 1956-1961, printed in 1961 — Marc Chagall, “The Trampled Flowers / Les fleurs saccagées” (detail), circa 1956-1961, printed in 1961. (NGC/MBAC, Ottawa; gift of Don de Félix Quinet, Ottawa, 1986, in memory of Joseph and Marguerite Liverant)

“In addition to sketching out the story, this second exhibition … include[s] a number of paintings by Chagall that we’ve borrowed from the NGC and the Minneapolis Institute of Art,” said Kear.

In addition to these two Chagall exhibits, WAG is featuring Winnipeg Jewish artist Esther Warkov in an exhibit that includes her work from the 1960s to the 1980s. It runs until Oct. 16.

Born in 1941, Warkov did not do that well in school, but there was a lot of family pressure to succeed. By chance, she discovered jewelry making as a young teen, which, in turn, exposed her to the world of fine art. She eventually studied art at the University of Manitoba.

Today, Warkov is one of Manitoba’s most distinguished artists. This current exhibit highlights a celebrated and defining period of her work, which was forged in Winnipeg’s North End. Her stylized motifs reveal the clear influence of the eastern European immigrant community’s Jewish folk art roots.

“Although abstract painting was the most common form of contemporary art in the 1960s and 1970s, Esther really bucked the trend,” said Kear. “She was very interested in the human figure, representational drawing/painting, and in paintings that tried to convey a story. It’s this kind of point where she really outlines nicely with Chagall. Chagall’s paintings are very much recalling memories and tell[ing] a story.”

Warkov’s work during this featured period was large-scale and multi-paneled. “It’s not just a painting on one canvas,” said Kear. “It’s multiple canvases that are sort of cobbled together, in a way, to make almost loose grids. Her work is narrative, seems to tell a kind of story, but you’re not sure what the story is. It’s very whimsical and draws a lot on memory.

“I had the pleasure of meeting her for the first time a couple weeks ago,” he added. “I was curious about how she paints, or went about making these works. Apparently, she very rarely started with a coherent plan. She would start with one canvas and do an image on it. That would lead into another image that she’d tack on this other canvas next to the original one, to build the … visual story. But, it was a story she was making up as she went along. I thought she would plan it out first, but that’s not how it went down apparently.

“She’s got a wild sense of humor and great wit, which are really reflected in the titles of her works, [which] are often very long.”

WAG director and chief executive officer Stephen Morris said, “When we installed the exhibition a few weeks ago and we had the works up – many of them painted 40 to 50 years ago – they were as fresh, relevant and dynamic, I think, as the day they were painted. They reference so many interesting stylistic developments, but I’d also say they reach into the heart of who Esther is – someone who has lived in the North End for years, exposed to not just the Jewish culture, but also to Jewish folk art and eastern European traditions … that whole interesting development in terms of painting which you see in her work.

“Esther also brings people into interesting scenarios with her paintings and, in the composition, it can be a little unnerving, a little jarring. But, there is, with both her and with Chagall, a surreal aspect. So, while they’re painting recognizable images and motifs, the way they’re composed takes us back a bit and actually twists things. Some call it ‘the dream,’ others something else. Regardless, it’s delightful and one could see an overlap between the artists in terms of imagery.”

Morris enjoys being able to “bring cultures and ethnicities together.” He said having a famous Russian artist like Chagall next to Warkov, “who, in a way, had a much more regional impact, I think it’s interesting. I love the fact that a visitor can walk between Chagall and Warkov and, yes, they know they’re in a different space, in a different time, with a different artist, but they’ll also see connections.”

Of those connections, Morris pointed to how Warkov’s “roots overlap with Chagall’s roots, in terms of her life, faith and culture.”

The Chagall exhibit is set up in a series of small spaces to highlight the story of Daphnis and Chloé – visitors walk through it in a chronological way. Warkov’s work is displayed in one large gallery and visitors are surrounded by her canvases.

Also at WAG this summer are several permanent galleries, as well as a major retrospective of Winnipeg artist Karel Funk, who, Morris said, “is at the height of his career.”

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Dream into reality

Artist Lori-ann Latremouille at the opening of her solo show at the Zack Gallery on Nov. 6. (photo from Lori-ann Latremouille)

Fairy tales do happen in real life. Take, for example, the story of local artist Lori-ann Latremouille. In her case, it was not Prince Charming who changed her life, but rather an art agent, by offering representation to the then 21-year-old unknown artist.

Latremouille left home at 16 to escape an unfortunate family situation. Although she liked painting and drawing at school, she was never exposed to the art world as a child. Later, to make a living, she had to take a job that had nothing to do with the arts. Still, art resided in her heart and wouldn’t be denied. “I knew even then I wanted to be creative, not answer the phones for the rest of my life,” she said in an interview with the Independent. “After a couple years, I quit my job and went to the local library.”

She taught herself art history by reading library books and copying masterpieces from illustrations in those books. She even had a show of her reproductions at that library when she was 18. “I kept asking my friends to pose for me but I couldn’t pay them,” she recalled with a smile. “They soon got tired of it, and so did I.”

Despite the tight budget, she continued teaching herself. “I took a class at Emily Carr once and loved it. At about the same time, I went to an art show opening. I had never been to an art show before. I loved it. I wanted to be involved in an art exhibition.”

After a few setbacks and gallons of perseverance, she managed to open her first solo show when she was 20. “There was another gallery show next door. It opened on the same day as mine, and I got lots of traffic from them,” she recalled. “I even sold a few pieces. Then an agent came to my show. She introduced me to the Heffel Gallery.”

One of the most prominent galleries in Vancouver, Heffel represented Latremouille for several years. Soon after this lucky break, she got an offer from an American dealer: he would buy several of her paintings at once and pay her as much as she needed for her monthly rent and bills so she could paint without financial worries. “He asked me how much I needed a month. I gave him a very modest estimate. I was used to economizing, had lots of practise since I was 16.” She was 21 then and she is still represented by that gallery in Portland. “I was blessed,” she said. “I met the right person at the right time.”

Of course, her talent had something to do with it. Her distinctive style – black and white palette, expressive lines and an occasional splash of solid color – emerged in the very beginning of her artistic career. “One color is like one note in music,” she said. “Black and white make the colors sing.”

Visitors to the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver can enjoy Latremouille’s visual songs this month, as her solo show Dreaming of Chagall is at the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery until Nov. 30.

“When I started painting,” she said, “I didn’t see any of the great artists [and their work]. I simply liked black and white. Later, one of the prominent collectors of Chagall’s art in San Francisco mentioned the similarities of my works and Chagall’s. She even bought one of my pieces for her collection. I feel honored.… When I first saw Chagall’s paintings and drawings, I fell in love. There is magic in his works. He also liked black and white. One of my favorite quotes of his is, ‘If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.’ That’s how I feel, too. My art comes from the heart. There is so much heart in Chagall.”

Latremouille considers herself an apprentice to Chagall, and several of her pictures reflect that self-assessment. Her drawing “Passing the Egg” is a metaphor for such an apprenticeship, a passing of the torch of art. The theme is also apparent in “Master and Apprentice,” while the bride and groom painting “Blue Orchid” clearly drew its inspiration from Chagall’s soaring brides.

Another theme of the show is the unity of human beings with the natural world. In many paintings, the shapes of people and creatures intertwine. There is no border but skin between them. “I always loved nature, loved animals,” she said. “Most forms of animals, birds and fish fit into the shapes of human bodies. We are intrinsically the same. I know that humanity is capable of doing great harm to nature but we are also capable of healing it. People do it all the time, work on restoring the environment, streams and forests. Maybe I’m a bit naïve but I believe it.”

One other pervading theme, running through almost every painting and drawing, is music. Instruments have a place of honor in most images. “I always loved listening to music when I drew. I also wrote poetry. Still do. I wanted to write songs, so I learned to play guitar in my late 20s. I’m an artist first, of course, but I love music and songwriting. I love drawing musical instruments. I think visual art foreshadowed my interest in music.”

Music often feeds her creativity, but anything can give a spark to an idea: a song, a painting by another artist, something she encountered on an outdoor trip. “I sketch all the time,” she said. “Then I look through my sketchbooks, pick a sketch I like, and start a painting. It grows organically, like a visual conversation with the emerging image. I love the creative process, when I see things falling into place, popping up from the two-dimensional lines of the sketch. When people buy a piece, it’s just icing on the cake.”

Even pain and illness have been an inspiration for her art. In 2012, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. After the diagnosis, depression hit her hard, but she fought it. Several of the best pieces in the Zack Gallery show were painted after her recovery from both cancer and depression. “Rescue from Blue” is a visual tale of escaping fear and pain, of flying into the light, while “Dreaming of Chagall” marks a new direction in the artist’s development. The painting is full of joy and more colorful than any other in the exhibition.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at o[email protected].