Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall (July 7, 1887 – March 28, 1985) was a Jewish Belarusian painter. Among the celebrated painters of the 20th century, he is often associated with the Surrealist movement.

Contents

1 Biography 2 Art of Chagall 3 Chagall and his works today 4 Chagall quotes 5 List of well-known works 6 Books 7 External links

Biography

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.

Beginning 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 difficult for Chagall — Jewish residents at the time could only live in St. Petersburg with a permit, and he was jailed for a brief time. Chagall remained in St. Petersburg until 1910, and regularly visited home village where in 1909 he met his future wife, 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 fiancé, Bella. World War I erupted 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 fled Paris. He hid at Villa Air-Bel in Marseilles and American journalist, Varian Fry assisted his escape from France through Spain and Portugal. In 1941, the Chagalls settled in America.

On September 2, 1944, his beloved Bella, the constant subject of his paintings and companion of his life, died from an illness. Two years later in 1946 he returned to Europe. By 1949 he was working 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.

Art of Chagall

Closely associated with the Surrealist movement, Chagall's imaginative works reflect the resonance of fantasy and dreams. He experimented with numerous techniques: gouache, watercolors, pastels, ink, collage, engraving, and lithography. Chagall took inspiration from Russian folk-art and folk-life, and portrayed many Biblical themes reflecting his Jewish heritage. In the 1960s and 1970s, Chagall involved himself in large-scale projects involving public spaces and important civic and religious buildings.

Chagall's works fit into several modern art categories. He took part in the movements of the Paris art world which preceded World War I and was thus involved with avant-garde 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.

His works abound with references to his childhood, yet often neglect some of the turmoil which he experienced. He communicates to those who view his works happiness and optimism by means of highly vivid colors. Chagall often posed himself, sometimes together with his wife, as an observer of the world — a colored world like that seen through a stained-glass window. Some see The White Crucifixion, which abounds in rich, intriguing detail, as a denunciation of the Stalin regime, the Nazi Holocaust, and all oppression of the Jews.

Chagall and his works today

Today, a Chagall painting can sell for more than $6 million. His work is 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."

• "In our life there is a single color, as on an artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love."

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, 1923–1924, 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, 1954–1955, 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, 1979–1980, 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

Books

• Nikolaj Aaron, Marc Chagall., (rororo-Monographie) Reinbek 2003 (In German)

External links

• Official Web Site of Marc Chagall Museum (http://www.chagall.vitebsk.by/)
• Official Web Site of Marc Chagall Museum in Nice, France (http://www.musee-chagall.fr/)
• Marc Chagall (http://www.fantasyarts.net/Marc_Chagall.htm) Biography and Educational Resources
• Essays about Marc Chagall by Igor Schestkow (http://www.igor-schestkow.de/en/essays)
• Chagall art at CGFA (http://cgfa.sunsite.dk/chagall/index.html)bg:Марк Шагал

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