Marc Chagall

Bio

Born Moische Segal on July 7, 1887, Marc Chagall lived a modest childhood in the small town of Vitebsk, Russia. As a boy, he showed little interest in school, enjoying only geometry and drawing classes. Despite his parents' hopes that he would pursue a career in accounting, Chagall chose instead his love of art and enrolled in Yehuda Pen's School of Painting and Design in Vitebsk. Although he learned the basic techniques at Pen's, the teaching approach focused on realistic, lifelike structures proved less than challenging for Chagall, whose natural instinct was towards a more poetic expression. Deciding he could learn more elsewhere, he moved to St. Petersburg, where he enrolled in the Svantseva School, a liberal art school open to many of the new ideas in art that were sweeping Western Europe. Chagall never fully adopted a particular painting philosophy; instead, he developed his own style, using increasingly vivid and imaginative colors to display subjects with a dreamlike and poetic quality.

In 1910, Chagall moved to Paris, the center of the modern art world, where the light of the city and exposure to other artist, such as Picasso and Braque, greatly influenced his work. Another major influence in both his life and art was Bella Rosenfeld, who Chagall met in 1909 and married in 1915. Bella was the first love of his life, his muse and inspiration. Because of his feelings for her, the subject of love became the focus of many of Chagall's most magical works. Chagall and Bella spent their early-married life in his hometown of Vitebsk, where Chagall founded an art school, and then in Moscow, where he created stage design and costumes for the State Jewish Theatre. They returned to Paris in 1923. By 1941, however, France had become too dangerous for Jewish citizens, so Chagall accepted an invitation to find sanctuary in New York. While there, Chagall lost his beloved Bella, who died from a viral infection in 1944.

 

After WWII, Chagall returned to France, where in 1952, he remarried to Valentine Brodsky, with whom he would spend the rest of his life. Chagall continued to create throughout his life, working in not only paintings, but also various other media, such as illustrations, stained glass, murals, etchings, and lithography. Chagall died in France on March 28, 1985, at the age of ninety-seven.