Chagall with Maria Lai The Inner Village

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Starting on 13 June, the Stazione dell’Arte and CaMuC in Ulassai will host a major exhibition dedicated to the dialogue between the works of Marc Chagall and Maria Lai.

Chagall’s works, imbued with a visionary and fairy-tale-like lyricism populated by floating figures, symbolic animals, and landscapes of memory, will enter into conversation with a selection of works by Maria Lai, an artist who transformed her connection to her homeland, oral traditions, and the act of sewing into a unique poetic language.

The exhibition stems from the idea of a possible field of resonance between two artists who may appear distant in terms of geography and artistic language, yet are profoundly united by their ability to transform their roots into universal imagination. For both artists, the village of origin is not merely a physical place, but an inner landscape: a poetic matrix that continues to generate images, stories, and visions.

Vitebsk, Chagall’s birthplace, and Ulassai, Maria Lai’s hometown, thus become places of memory and imagination—inner territories continuously reinvented through art. The more than seventy works on display, including paintings, prints, artists’ books, woven works, and works on paper, create a journey centered on the value of storytelling and the fairy tale.

Through the encounter of two deeply personal artistic universes, the exhibition invites visitors to recognize how art can preserve intimate and collective stories while transforming them into images capable of speaking to all.

Chagall with Maria Lai. The Inner Village, curated by Paul Schneiter and Marco Peri, is promoted by the Municipality of Ulassai and produced by the Fondazione Stazione dell’Arte with the organizational support of Arthemisia.

Marco Peri, Director of the Stazione dell’Arte, states: “This exhibition inaugurates the celebrations marking the twentieth anniversary of the Fondazione Stazione dell’Arte, which opened on 8 July 2006 through the joint initiative of Maria Lai and the Municipality of Ulassai. This significant anniversary reaffirms the profound meaning of this museum: a place born from the artist’s gift to her community and conceived as a living cultural legacy dedicated to encounter and growth through contemporary art.

Welcoming the works of Marc Chagall, one of the most poetic artists of the twentieth century, offers an unexpected new perspective on Maria Lai’s work. The dialogue between the two artists does not seek formal similarities; rather, it opens a space of deep resonance: storytelling transformed into images, the bond with one’s homeland as a source of imagination, and the ability of art to inhabit a dimension suspended between lived experience and poetic vision.”

The exhibition is funded by the European Union through the NextGenerationEU programme, within the framework of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), supporting the cultural, social, and economic regeneration of historic villages and rural communities.