Marc Chagall as photographed in 1941 by Carl Van Vechten

Marc Chagall (July 7, 1887 – March 28, 1985) was a Belarussian painter of Jewish origin. Among the most celebrated painters of the 20th century, he has often been seen as closely associated with the Surrealist Movement.

Life

Born Moishe Zakharovich Shagalov (Moishe Segal) in Vitebsk, Belarus (then in the Russian Empire), Chagall was the eldest of eight children in the close-knit Jewish family formed by his father, a herring merchant and his mother, Felga-Ita. This period of his life, described as happy though impoverished, appears in references throughout Chagall's work.

Begining to study painting in 1906 under famed local artist Yehuda Pen , Chagall moved to St. Petersburg only a few months later in 1907. There he joined the school of the Society of Art Supporters and studied under Nikolai Roerich, encountering artists of every school and style. This period was a difficult one for Chagall, as Jewish residents at the time could only live in St. Petersburg with a permit, and in fact was jailed for a brief time. Chagal remained in St. Petersburg until 1910, making various trips to his home village, during one of which he was to meet his future spouse, Bella Rosenfeld .

After becoming known as an artist, he left St. Petersburg to settle in Paris in order to be near the art community of the Montparnasse district. In 1914, he returned to Vitebsk and a year later married his fiancée, Bella , whom he had met in 1909. World War I broke out while Chagall was in Russia. In 1916, the Chagalls had a daughter, Ida.

Chagall became an active participant in the Russian Revolution. The Soviet Ministry of Culture made him a Commissar of Art for the Vitebsk region , where he founded an art school. He did not fare well politically under the Soviet system. He and his wife moved to Moscow in 1920 and back to Paris in 1923.

With the German occupation of France during World War II, and the deportation of Jews and the Holocaust, the Chagalls had to flee Paris, located near the invading German army. He hid at Villa Air-Bel in Marseilles and was assisted to escape from France through Spain and Portugal by the American journalist, Varian Fry. In 1941, the Chagalls settled in America.

On September 2, 1944, Chagall faced a crisis: his beloved Bella, the constant subject of his paintings and companion of his life, passed away from an illness. Two years later in 1946 he returned to Europe. By 1949 he had set himself up in Provence, France. During these intense years, he rediscovered the vital energy of color, free and vibrant. His works of this period are dedicated to themes inspired by love and the joy of life, with curved, sinuous figures. He also began to work in sculputre, ceramics, and stained glass.

Chagall remarried in 1952 to Valentina Brodsky . He traveled several times to Greece, and in 1957 visited Israel, where in 1960 he created stained glass windows for the synagogue of the Hadassah University Clinic in Jerusalem and in 1966, wall art for the new parliament being constructed in that city.

The museum in Vitsebsk which bears his name was founded in 1997 in the building where his family lived on 29 Pokrovskaia street--though until his death, years before the fall of the Soviet Bloc, he was persona non grata in his homeland. The museum only has copies of his work.

He died at the age of 98 in Saint-Paul de Vence, France.

Artistic analysis of Chagall's works

One of the most important artists of The School of Paris , Mark Chagall was closely associated with the Surrealist Movement. His imaginative works reflect the resonance of fantasy and dreams. Chagall was to experiment with numerous techniques: gouache, watercolors, pastels, ink, collage, engraving, and lithography. Chagall took much from Russian folk-art and folk-life, and portrayed many Biblical themes reflecting his Jewish heritage. In the 1960s and 70s, Chagall became involved with large-scale projects involving public spaces and important civic and religious buildings.

Chagall's works are somewhat difficult to categorize within the history of modern art. He took part in the movement of the Paris art world which preceded World War I and was thus involved with avant-guard currents. However, his work always found itself on the margins of these movements and emerging trends, including Cubism and Fauvism. He was closely associated with the Paris School and its expoenents, including Amedeo Modigliani.

Chagall's works abound with references to his childhood in Jewish Russia, yet often seems to neglect the rarely depicted the turmoil with which swelled. He communicates to those who view his works happiness and optimism by means of his highly vivid colors, so light. In depicting the couple flying above his natal village, he shows a Bohemian spirit often detached from reality. Hand in hand with his partner, he expresses an eternal love and a view of kindness toward the world. Chagall often seems to pose himself or he and his wife as observers of the world--a colored world like that seen through a stained-glass window. Some see The White Crufixion , which abounds in rich, intriguing detail, as a denunciation of the Stalin regime, the Nazi Holocaust, and all oppression of which Jews are victims.

Chagall and his works today

Today, a Chagall painting can sell for more than US$6 million. His work can be found in the Paris Opera, the First National Bank Plaza of downtown Chicago, the Metropolitan Opera, the cathedral of Metz, France, Notre-Dame_de_Reims, the Fraumünster Cathedral in Zürich, Switzerland, and the Church of St. Stephan in Mainz, Germany.

Chagall Quotes

• "All colors are the friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites."

• "I work in whatever medium likes me at the moment."

List of well-known works

• Young Woman on a Sofa (Mariaska), 1907 (Private collection)
• The Wedding , 1910
• The Birth , 1910 (Kunsthaus Zürich )
• I and the Village , 1911 (New York, Museum of Modern Art)
• Adam and Eve , 1912
• The Violinist , 1911–1914 (Düsseldorf, Germany, Kunstsammlung NRW)
• Birthday (1915)
• Green Violinist (1923-24, Guggenheim Museum)
• The Fall of the Angels , 1923–1947 (Kunstmuseum Basel )
• The Female Acrobat , 1930 (Paris, Musée National d´Art Moderne )
• Solitude, 1933, Tel Aviv Museum
• Midsummer Night's Dream (1939)
• Madonna with sleighs , 1947 (Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam)
• Lovers in the Red Sky (1950)
• Moses receiving the Tablets of the Law (1950-1952)
• King David, 1961
• The Green Night , 1952
• Exodus (1952-1966)
• The Bastille, 1953
• The Seine Bridge , 1954 (Hamburger Kunsthalle )
• Champ de mars , 1954/55 (Museum Folkwang , Essen)
• The Crossing of the Red Sea , 1955
• Self-portrait, 1959-1960
• Ceiling of the Garnier Opera , 1964
• War, 1964–1966 (Kunsthaus Zürich )
• Stage settings for Die Zauberflöte, Metropolitan Opera, New York, 1967
• The Prophet Jeremiah (1968)
• Job , 1975)
• Biblical Message , 17 Works (Nice, Musée National )
• The Yellow Donkey , 1979
• The Great Parade , 1979/80 (Pierre Matisse Gallery , New York).
• Biblical-themed Windows, 1968 (Metz Cathedral)
• Biblical-themed Windows, 1974 (Reims Cathedral)
• Family (1975-1976)
• Nine biblical-themed windows, 1978-1985 (St. Stephan Church, Mainz, Germany)
• The White Crucifixion

External links

• Official Web Site of Marc Chagall Museum
• Official Web Site of Marc Chagall Museum in Nice, France
• Marc Chagall Biography and Educational Resources
• Essays about Marc Chagall by Igor Schestkow