MOSCOW REDISCOVERS CHAGALL WITH EXHIBIT

Russian-born Jewish painter Marc Chagall, neglected for decades in his homeland, was belatedly saluted here Wednesday as a giant among 20th-Century modern artists.

The prestigious Pushkin Museum opened a comprehensive exhibit of the late painter’s works, in what some organizers termed a victory for the glasnost, or “openness,” policy of Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

Chagall’s widow, Valentina, appeared at a press preview of the show, which will allow Muscovites to see many of his surrealistic paintings for the first time.

During the Stalin era, and for years afterward, artists who did not comply with the strict doctrine of “socialist realism” were in disfavor and their works were not shown publicly. As a result, the fantasy and explosive color in Chagall’s work, his flying lovers and lively circus clowns, were not part of the Soviet museum-goer’s experience. Many of Chagall’s paintings and prints were consigned to storerooms.

The current exhibit includes such well-known Chagalls as “Self-Portrait With a Muse,” “A Walk,” “Above the Town” and “Green Lovers.” It is expected to draw as many as 500,000 Soviet visitors before it closes Oct. 11.

The artist’s last one-man show, which was much smaller, was put on in Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery in 1973. It was the last time that Chagall visited his homeland before his death in March, 1985.

There is no museum or memorial to him in his birthplace, Vitebsk, in western Byelorussia, and he did not visit there while he was in the Soviet Union in 1973. But many of his paintings reflect the life of the town.

His widow, interviewed by the weekly Literary Gazette, was quoted as saying, “He would have been overflowing with joy at this exhibition, which he had been dreaming of all his life.”

Chagall, born a century ago in 1887, spent his formative years as an artist in Paris, from 1910 to 1914. He returned to Russia and was unable to leave during World War I. While he was there, revolutionary Russia had a brief period of enthusiasm for avant-garde art but Chagall was soon discouraged by bureaucratic and ideological infighting. He returned to France in 1922 and remained there for most of the rest of his life. During World War II, he lived in the United States.

Soviet experts regarded Chagall as a French artist, despite his Russian roots. Some of his paintings were hung in museums with the works of Western European artists.

Ogonyok, a weekly magazine here, paid tribute to Chagall in a recent issue. “There was a time,” it said, “when we forgot him. He was considered by us to be an avant-gardist and an emigrant.”

Irina Antonova, director of the Pushkin, said many of Chagall’s works were shown in a 1981 “Moscow-Paris” exhibit but she acknowledged that his later paintings are virtually unknown in the Soviet Union.

“Moscow has been waiting for this exhibit for a long time,” she said.

It includes 90 paintings and 200 drawings, she said, with about 60 loaned by Chagall’s widow and his daughter, Ida, and the rest from Soviet public and private collections.

Valentina Chagall, a white-haired woman of 82 who joked that her age was a “military secret,” was asked about the value of the works on display.

“They have mostly sentimental value,” she replied. “I am very satisfied being here, and of course I am only sorry that my husband’s not with me.”

Andrei Voznesensky, a leading Soviet poet, was one of the prime movers in arranging the Chagall exhibit. He said it was an example of glasnost in action, and he said he hopes that a museum honoring the artist will be opened in Vitebsk.

“Vitebsk will understand Chagall’s significance some time in the future,” he said. “ Glasnost is not proceeding smoothly everywhere. It meets difficulties.”

Museum Director Antonova added: “A lot of Russian painters of the 19th and 20th centuries have no museums dedicated to them.”

Syliva Forestier, director of the Chagall Museum in Nice, on the French Riviera, said:

“I think the master himself would be extremely happy to know that his 100th birthday is being celebrated in his native land.”