VERCELLI.- Lovers float through the sky, animals take on unexpected colors, and familiar villages appear suspended between reality and dreams. These are the images that have made Marc Chagall one of the most beloved artists of the twentieth century. Yet behind their apparent joy lies a story of displacement, loss, and an extraordinary determination to preserve the people and places that shaped his life.

That more complicated side of Chagall is at the heart of "Chagall," a major exhibition at Spazio ARCA in Vercelli, Italy, running from October 13, 2026, through March 29, 2027. Bringing together 60 works spanning more than half a century, the exhibition explores how the artist transformed personal memories, historical upheaval, and enduring love into a visual language that remains remarkably relevant today.

Born in 1887 in Vitebsk, now part of Belarus, Chagall grew up surrounded by the traditions and daily rhythms of a Jewish community that would remain central to his imagination. Although he left his homeland and never returned, its houses, streets, animals, and people continued to inhabit his paintings throughout his long life.

For Chagall, home was never simply a geographical location. It became something he carried within himself, a place reconstructed through color, imagination, and memory.

One of the exhibition's highlights, Russian Village (1929), captures this delicate relationship between observation and fantasy. A snow-covered village appears recognizable enough, but a sleigh pulled by an ox passes through the sky. The scene is both familiar and impossible, suggesting how memory can preserve a place while quietly transforming it.

As the decades passed, Chagall continued returning to Vitebsk in his paintings, even as the actual city was devastated during World War II. His imagined homeland became a refuge from the destruction of the real one.

The exhibition's organizers see particular significance in presenting these works at a time when war, migration, and displacement continue to shape lives around the world. Chagall's experiences of revolution, persecution, exile, and personal loss lend his fantastical images a gravity that is easy to overlook.

Love offers another thread running through the exhibition. In works such as Lovers with the Blue Donkey (c. 1955) and Lovers on a Yellow Background (1960), affection becomes almost weightless, liberated from the ordinary rules of gravity and perspective.

Yet Chagall's lovers are not simply romantic figures. They also speak to the emotional bonds that endure through separation and the passage of time.

Flowers, too, occupy a special place in his work. First associated with Bella, his first wife, bouquets became lasting expressions of affection, remembrance, and renewal. In his later paintings, flowers often expand into brilliant fields of color, their outlines dissolving as if the artist were attempting to preserve something beautiful that could not last forever.

The exhibition follows these recurring subjects through four thematic sections: "The Inner Village," "The Voice That Remains," "The Human Stage," and "Blooming Again."

A particularly revealing section introduces visitors to Chagall's poetry. Although best known as a painter, he wrote throughout his life in Russian and Yiddish. In 1968, he published Poèmes, a collection accompanied by 24 color woodcuts, all of which are included in the exhibition.

These works reveal the close relationship between his written and visual imagination. The same lovers, flowers, villages, and circus performers that fill his canvases also inhabit his verses.

The circus provides another way of understanding Chagall's emotional complexity. His clowns and performers may appear playful, but their theatrical masks can conceal loneliness and sorrow. The artist understood that happiness and sadness were not opposites; they often existed together.

This sensitivity is especially evident in his self-portraits, which appear throughout the exhibition, from Self-Portrait with the House (1922–23) to Double Self-Portrait with White Bush (1978). Across more than five decades, Chagall repeatedly examined his own identity, sometimes presenting multiple faces or perspectives within a single image.

An additional dimension comes from works in the Giuseppe Iannaccone Collection, selected by Daniele Fenaroli. Paintings by Italian artists including Antonietta Raphaël, Scipione, Fausto Pirandello, Renato Birolli, and Italo Valenti introduce visitors to another side of twentieth-century European art.

Although these artists developed their own distinct approaches, they shared Chagall's interest in emotion, individual experience, and the power of painting to move beyond literal representation.

Their inclusion also recalls a period when artistic independence could carry serious consequences. Chagall's work was among the art condemned by the Nazi regime, while many Italian artists struggled against restrictive cultural expectations during the Fascist era.

The exhibition takes place in the former Church of San Marco, an architectural setting that adds another layer to the experience. The presence of an artist whose Jewish heritage remained so deeply embedded in his work, displayed within a former Christian church, creates an encounter between different histories and traditions.

Organized by the Municipality of Vercelli and Arthemisia in collaboration with the Giuseppe Iannaccone Foundation, the exhibition is curated by Francesca Villanti, with Daniele Fenaroli responsible for the section devoted to the Italian collection.

For visitors familiar with Chagall's floating figures and exuberant colors, the exhibition offers an opportunity to look beyond the immediate enchantment of his paintings. His art was never untouched by the tragedies of his century. Rather, it emerged from them, holding on to tenderness, imagination, and the possibility of beginning again.

Nearly four decades after his death in 1985, Chagall's paintings continue to offer something unexpectedly personal. They remind us that the places we leave behind can remain part of who we are, that love and grief can inhabit the same image, and that even after profound loss, the imagination can find ways to flourish.

"Chagall" is on view at Spazio ARCA, Ex Chiesa di San Marco, Piazza San Marco 1, Vercelli, Italy, through March 29, 2027. The exhibition is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. General admission is €14.