Around 500 postcards with reproductions of Marc Chagall's works have been collected by a Vitebsk local historian

On July 6, Vitebsk /Olga Bogacheva - BELTA/. A Vitebsk local historian, Arkady Podlipsky, has collected about 500 postcards with reproductions of Marc Chagall's works over 30 years. The owner of the unusual collection informed a BELTA correspondent about this. According to him, the postcards were acquired by him personally, as well as through acquaintances in Germany, France, Russia, Switzerland, Italy, Holland, Israel, England, Spain, and Denmark. The oldest exhibit, a black-and-white postcard "Paris from My Studio Window," was issued in 1914 in Germany and reached the philocardist after a long journey through the USA and Sverdlovsk. Today, this unusual postcard, along with over 170 others, can be seen at an exhibition in the Vitebsk Regional Museum of Local Lore, opened for the 125th anniversary of Marc Chagall's birth. The exhibits included in the exposition reflect reproductions of the artist's works, views of Chagall museums in Vitebsk, interiors of the House-Museum, and monuments in his honor. "The Town Hall displays a very small fraction of what has been published in the form of postcards, even over the last half-century. However, it provides a sufficient overview of the artist's work and reflects its main stages," the interlocutor noted. Arkady Podlipsky recalled that the first postcards with reproductions of Marc Chagall's works were issued in the summer of 1914 by the Berlin art gallery Der Sturm, which was holding the artist's second solo exhibition at that time. In the subsequent period, up until the end of the 1950s, postcards with reproductions of Chagall's works, if issued at all, were infrequent and in small quantities. It was only from the 1960s onwards that they began to appear in large print runs in many countries around the world. The majority of such postcards are published by museums holding the master's works in Vitebsk. Some publishing houses specializing in the production of visual products also issue them.

"It is very difficult to count the total number of Chagall postcards ever issued. Clearly, their number is in the hundreds, and possibly (considering different editions of the same work), even thousands. Difficulties in counting arise from the fact that not all publishers keep records of their output. And if they do, it's only in recent years. Furthermore, they typically do not publish catalogues of their releases. The only realistic way to find out what was issued and in what quantity on the Chagall theme is to collect postcards," noted a philocardist. In his opinion, this is quite feasible but requires considerable funds. For example, he estimated the cost of the works presented at the exhibition alone at 5-6 thousand euros. Touching upon his future plans, the local historian shared that he will continue to expand his collection and also intends to compile a catalogue of Chagall's postal postcards. Marc Chagall (1887-1985) is the most famous student of the Vitebsk artist-teacher Yehuda Pen (1854-1937) and one of the most world-renowned natives of Vitebsk. Writer I. Ehrenburg spoke very well of his attachment to his hometown: "It seems that the entire history of world art has not known an artist as attached to his hometown as Chagall... Wishing to say something good about Paris, Chagall called it 'my second Vitebsk'." Chagall's work over the last century has attracted the attention not only of collectors and museums worldwide but also of publishers of postal postcards and philocardists (collectors of postal postcards). -0-

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