Marc Chagall

Lore & Background

Marc Chagall was born Moishe Shagal in 1887 into a Jewish family near Vitebsk, then in the Pale of Settlement of the Russian Empire. He was the eldest of nine children; his father worked for a herring merchant and his mother sold groceries. He received his primary education at a Jewish religious school, studying Hebrew and the Bible. At age 13, his mother paid 50 roubles to enroll him in a regular high school. His artistic career began after he saw a fellow student drawing and began copying images from books. He studied briefly under Yehuda (Yuri) Pen in Vitebsk but found academic portrait painting did not suit him.

Before World War I, Chagall traveled between Saint Petersburg, Paris, and Berlin, developing a personal style based on Eastern European and Jewish folklore. During the war, he lived in Vitebsk and Petrograd, becoming a distinguished Russian artist and a member of the modernist avant-garde. He founded the Vitebsk Museum of Modern Art and People's Art School. After the Bolshevik Revolution, he worked in and near Moscow under difficult conditions before leaving for Paris in 1923. During World War II, he escaped occupied France to the United States, living in New York City for seven years before returning to France in 1948.

Reader's Guide

Marc Chagall's significance lies in his synthesis of modernist movements—Cubism, Symbolism, and Fauvism—with themes drawn from Eastern European Jewish folklore and Hasidic culture. Art critic Robert Hughes called him 'the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century.' His work in stained glass produced windows for the cathedrals of Reims and Metz, the Fraumünster in Zürich, the UN, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Jerusalem Windows in Israel. He also painted part of the ceiling of the Paris Opéra. Pablo Picasso remarked in the 1950s, 'When Matisse dies, Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what colour really is.' Throughout his career, he remained 'most emphatically a Jewish artist, whose work was one long dreamy reverie of life in his native Vitebsk.' His legacy endures as a bridge between early European modernism and Jewish cultural expression.

Did You Know?

• Chagall was the eldest of nine children.
• He founded the Vitebsk Museum of Modern Art and People's Art School.
• He produced stained glass windows for the UN and the Art Institute of Chicago.
• Pablo Picasso said Chagall would be the only painter left who understands colour after Matisse died.

Notable Quotes (Wikiquote)

"Chagall started in 1912 (in Paris) to paint his 'Golgotha' [2] and later more Crucifixions. In this (later! quote) Chagall looks back on this question." — Marc Chagall "In response I am sending you some pictures which I painted in Paris out of homesickness for Russia. They are not very typical of me; I have selected the most modest ones for the Russian exhibition." — Marc Chagall "The stars were my best friends. The air was full of legends and phantoms, full of mythical and fair-tale creatures, which suddenly flew away over the roof, so that one was at one with the firmament." — Marc Chagall "If I weren't a Jew (in the sense in which I use the word) then I wouldn't be an artist, or at least not the one I am now." — Marc Chagall