In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Chagall experimented for the first time with clay, glazing and firing at potteries in Venice and Antibes. He fell in love with the art form. Later, he took lessons in ceramics alongside Léger and Picasso at the Madoura workshop in Vallauris. Over time, Chagall produced a remarkable body of painted and glazed ceramic objects that includes this attractive iteration of Adam and Eve, a story that Chagall returned to often over the decades.’ A high-fired, molded, and shaped work, Chagall used an ochre paste with goblet and oxide decorations. He then engraved it with a knife and drypoint underglaze. Adam and Eve is a touchstone for Chagall’s fascination with the Bible, the source he called, ‘the greatest source of all that is poetic.’  But it is the firing that thrilled Chagall the most with its ability to create a merger of the pictorial and material, a far closer bond than paint and canvas. Adam et Eve is signed and dated on verso, “Chagall/Antibes/1950”.