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# Marc Chagall's 1924 etching L'Acrobate au violon spent twenty years in a French customs warehouse and has now been handed over to the Museum of Fine Arts and Archaeology in Besançon
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/ofort-marka-shagala-lacrobate-au-violon-1924-goda-dvadtsat-let-prolezhal-na-sklade-frantsuzskoi-tamozhni-i-teper-peredan-muzeiu-iziashchnykh-iskusstv-i-arkheologii-bezansona/
- Published: 2026-07-25T17:20:04.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T05:25:32.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Art, Museums, Heritage

Marc Chagall's 1924 etching L'Acrobate au violon spent twenty years in a French customs warehouse and has now been handed over to the Museum of Fine Arts and Archaeology in Besançon. In 2006 the French authorities stopped a lorry that was taking works of art out of France into Switzerland and seized the Chagall etching together with a 1959 drawing by Ossip Zadkine, since the works had no certificates permitting their export. The carriers were arrested and fined for concealing the works.

On Monday the customs service of the Franche-Comté region handed the etching over to the Besançon museum.

The sheet shows a man balancing on a violin, with an upside-down chicken floating beside him; in the foreground a goat-like creature arches its back. On the acrobat's right trouser leg is a small Star of David.

The etching comes from an edition of 150 impressions and is valued at only a few thousand euros. But it is the first and only work by Chagall in the Besançon collection, and it will go on display in September.

The Zadkine drawing, also on a musical theme, was sent to the Musée Zadkine in Paris.