Original Marc Chagall "Les Amoureux Devant l'Arbre", 1987 - Mourlot

This is an original lithographic poster created in 1987 by the Ateliers Mourlot in Paris for a major travelling exhibition of works by Marc Chagall across Japan — visiting Tokyo, Yamagata, Nagoya, and Gunma. The image, Les Amoureux Devant l'Arbre — The Lovers Before the Tree — is quintessential Chagall: a tender, floating couple suspended in the luminous, dreamlike space that made his work instantly recognizable across the world.

Love, flowers, and the countryside of his Russian childhood were the constant subjects of Chagall's imagination — themes he returned to throughout a career that spanned nearly eight decades. Marc Chagall (1887–1985) was one of the most beloved artists of the 20th century and one of the Ateliers Mourlot's most devoted collaborators, having worked alongside Fernand Mourlot from the 1950s onward to produce some of the most celebrated lithographs of the postwar era.

Mourlot posters produced for exhibitions in Japan are exceptionally rare — printed in Paris for a specific cultural audience on the other side of the world, they were distributed exclusively within Japan during the exhibition period and rarely made their way back to European or North American collections. This piece is a document of Chagall's extraordinary global reach, two years after his death in 1985.

A rare and deeply poetic piece — Chagall's most enduring subject, printed by his lifelong workshop, for one of the world's most discerning artistic audiences.