10 South Dearborn
Exelon Plaza
Chicago
Composed of thousands of inlaid chips in over 250 colors, this mosaic is by Marc Chagall. Titled The Four Seasons, it portrays six scenes of Chicago. Chagall maintained, “the seasons represent human life, both physical and spiritual, at its different ages.” The design for this mosaic was created in Chagall’s studio in France, transferred onto full-scale panels and installed in Chicago with the help of a skilled mosaicist.
Chagall continued to modify his design after its arrival in Chicago, bringing up-to-date the areas containing the city’s skyline (last seen by the artist 30 years before installation) and adding pieces of native Chicago brick.
The mosaic was a gift to the City of Chicago by Frederick H. Prince (via the Prince Charitable Trusts). It is wrapped around four sides of a 70 feet long, 14 feet high by 10 feet wide box, and was dedicated on September 27, 1974. It was renovated in 1994.
Marc Zakharovich Chagall (1887 – 1985) was a Belarussian-Russian-French artist. Art critic Robert Hughes referred to Chagall as “the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century” (though Chagall saw his work as ‘not the dream of one people but of all humanity’). An early modernist, he was associated with several major artistic styles and created works in virtually every artistic medium, including painting, book illustrations, stained glass, stage sets, ceramic, tapestries and fine art prints.
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