Marc Chagall – The Painter-Poet

Zurich and Metz, Reims and Mainz and Chichester and Tudeley, Sarrebourg and Jerusalem – the places where you might notice particularly beautiful, colorful and completely unusual stained glass windows in church buildings are scattered far and wide across the world.

This wonderful glass art with biblical motifs was created in all these cathedrals and synagogues, minsters and churches by one artist, the wonderful Marc Chagall .

Marc Chagall's poetic, figurative style made him one of the most popular modern artists, while his long life and diverse output made him one of the most internationally acclaimed artists of the modern era. While many of his contemporaries pursued ambitious experiments that often led to abstraction, Chagall's distinction lay in his unwavering belief in the power of figurative art, which he maintained despite incorporating ideas from Fauvism and Cubism.

Profile and important information at a glance

Marc Chagall was a French-Russian painter of Jewish faith. His original Russian name was Мойше Хацкелевич Шагал / Moishe Chazkelevich Shagal. His family background, his hometown of Vitebsk, and motifs from the Bible and the circus are the central themes of his oeuvre.

Born : July 7, 1887 in Lyosna , Belarus

Deceased : March 28, 1985 in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France

Associated period(s): Expressionism, Cubism, Fauvism

What type of art/media: paintings, color charts, church and synagogue windows, mosaics, lithographs

Popular motifs/themes: The family environment, his hometown of Vitebsk, and motifs from the Bible, as well as from the circus and music.

Important works: 

• To my fiancée (1911)
• Self-portrait with seven fingers
• The Village (1911)
• The Holy Coachmen (1912)
• The Gates of the Cemetery (1917)
• White Crucifixion (1938)
• Green Violinist (1924)
• America Windows (1977)
• The Three Candles (1940)
• Cow with Parasol (1946)
• Bouquet with Flying Lovers (1947)
• Bella with white collar
• Homage to Apollinaire
• The Green Violinist
• Stroll
• The circus horse
• Paris through the window
• The Marée

In which museums / exhibitions can it be found:

• National Museum of Marc Chagall in Nice, France
• Centre Pompidou Metz, France
• Marc Chagall Museum in Vitebsk, Russia
• Museum of Modern Art in New York, USA
• Kunsthalle of the Hypo Cultural Foundation in Munich, Germany
• Art Collection North Rhine-Westphalia, DE
• Olaf Gulbransson Museum at Tegernsee, Germany
• Kunsthalle Weishaupt in Ulm, Germany
• SCHIRN Kunsthalle Frankfurt, DE
• Buchheim Museum, DE
• Berggruen Museum in Berlin, DE
• Kunstforum Wien, Austria
• Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland

Biography – The early life of Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall is undeniably famous, but he's still the perfect artist to use if you want to find out, in a circle of highly educated, fanciful art enthusiasts, whether one or two of them really know their stuff. Just start talking about Marc Chagall, the incredible French Expressionist, and see who disagrees.

Marc Chagall is no more French than his real name is Marc Chagall; he was of Russian-Jewish origin and was baptized with the much more melodious name Moshe Segal, which was Russified in his official documents to Moishe Chazkelevich Shagalov or Moishe Zakharovich Shagalov. His birthdate is also frequently incorrectly stated; according to the Julian calendar then in use in Russia, the artist was born on June 24, 1887.

The converted date in the Gregorian calendar would be July 6th in the 19th century and only from 1900 onwards July 7th; therefore, anyone claiming that Chagall was born on July 7, 1887, is wrong according to both calendars (Chagall himself doubted that his parents had given the correct year of birth; he considered himself younger, but would only have been exempt from military service with the recorded date).

Many truly knowledgeable art lovers will have their eyes light up if you show interest in the work of one of the most famous artists of the 20th century , because it is not only his church windows that fascinate.

Moshe Segal was born in Peskovatik, a suburb of Vitebsk, which at the time was part of the Russian Empire and is now part of Belarus. Vitebsk was roughly half populated by Orthodox Jews like Chagall's parents, who belonged to the working class and had nine siblings besides him to raise. They knew how to provide well for them; his father worked in the herring fishery, and his mother ran a small grocery store.

Chagall's parents also did something extraordinary in his upbringing: Even in the cheder, the Jewish religious school, Chagall had difficulties due to his stutter. His father gave him singing lessons at home to improve his speech, and his mother bribed the teacher so that Moshe could attend the city school. Normally, Jews were not admitted there, so this was the only way Chagall could learn Russian in addition to Yiddish. He was now also able to take violin lessons and begin drawing.

Artistic training

After graduating from local school, he became a student in 1906 at the studio of the renowned painter Yehuda Pen , who had studied at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. Chagall began his studies with Pen in 1906, who ran an exclusive, exclusively Jewish institution for painting and drawing students in Vitebsk. Although grateful for the free academic training, Chagall left the institution after only a few months.

Chagall then went to Saint Petersburg with a friend to complete his artistic training at various schools. He attended, among others, the Imperial Academy of Arts in the capital and several private schools, and met the Russian-French painter Léon Bakst, who introduced him to the current trends in painting and raved about the great reception Russian art was receiving in Paris.

Career and rise as an artist

1906 – 1910 (Russian Empire)

The painter Chagall studied between 1908 and 1910 at the Zvantseva School of Drawing and Painting under Léon Bakst, a decorative artist known for designing stage costumes for the Ballets Russes, who was also Jewish. During these years in Saint Petersburg, he also became acquainted with unconventional pieces and the works of painters such as Paul Gauguin .

During this time, Chagall repeatedly visited his hometown of Vitebsk, where his future wife Bella Rosenfeld modeled for him (one of the first of these attempts at nude painting was discovered by his horrified mother, Chagall then painted over it, and he called this picture “Funeral” somewhat mockingly).

Chagall later raved about his first encounter with her: “Her calm is also mine, her eyes are also mine. It is as if she knew everything about my past, my present and also my future, as if she could see right through me.”

He had already produced some sensational works at this time, including his famous black and white painting "The Dead Man" (Le Mort) .

1910 – 1914 (France)

He was thus able to sell his first paintings, and with the proceeds and a small stipend from a patron, Chagall was able to set off for Paris in September 1910.

He set up his own studio in Montparnasse , hoping for support from Russian artists living in Paris, such as Wassily Kandinsky, Alexei von Jawlensky, and Jacques Lipchitz. Initially with little success, it wasn't until he moved into his studio in the artists' colony "La Ruche" in the winter of 1911/1912 that he found himself at the heart of the Parisian artistic avant-garde and met sought-after painters like Robert Delaunay, Amedeo Modigliani, Fernand Léger, and Albert Gleizes.

He soon became friends with the poets Max Jacob, Guillaume Apollinaire and Blaise Cendrars, and his new studio was larger and allowed for larger picture formats.

nickname "painter-poet" dates from this period ; however, when his friends called him "le poète" because he reinterpreted the Parisian nickname "la ville lumière" (the city of light) as "la lumière-liberté" (the light of freedom), Chagall was thinking less poetically and more concretely about freedom: In his Tsarist-ruled homeland, for example, as a Jew, he needed a residence permit for the capital city of his homeland!

Chagall enjoyed this freedom and looked at the paintings of as many famous artists as possible. When he returned to his studio in the evenings from his museum visits and walks, the day's experiences were vividly and imaginatively transformed into paintings.

Chagall was soon allowed to participate in the first Parisian art exhibitions. In these "Salons," he encountered the Fauvists' explosions of color and the Cubists' abstract constructions , which inspired him. After initial Cubist-influenced experiments, Chagall was now able to develop his own style. Although his work "Dedicated to My Bride" was considered pornographic, it was accepted into the prestigious Paris Spring Salon in 1912.

His paintings were already described by Apollinaire as "surnaturel" at the time; it wasn't until about ten years later that the term "surreal" and a new art movement, "Surrealism," . Chagall now employed gouache (water-based opaque paint on paper) as his preferred medium, allowing him to capture all his spontaneous improvisations inexpensively. During his four years in Paris, Chagall painted hundreds of gouaches and only about 40 Canvas art , which were reserved for planned works.

In 1913, through Apollinaire, he met the Berlin art dealer Herwarth Walden , who took him to the first Autumn Salon in Berlin. In 1914, Walden organized Chagall's first solo exhibition at his Berlin gallery, "Der Sturm." While the artist was visiting his family and fiancée in Vitebsk on his way to the opening in Berlin, the First World War broke out, the borders were closed, and a return to Paris became impossible.

1914 – 1922 (Soviet Belarus)

Chagall then married and moved with his wife Bella in 1915 to the capital city, by then called Petrograd, where their daughter Ida was born in 1916. Instead of military service, he worked in a war economy office and explored the new art in Russia, exhibited in Moscow in 1916, and painted pictures influenced by his wartime experiences .

Artistic imagination seemed to have been left behind in Paris; soldiers, family, street scenes, and landscapes provided the motifs, until Chagall was swept up by the revolutionary upheaval in Russia. He wanted to contribute, conceiving an art school in Vitebsk, which he was able to establish in 1919 as the Commissar for the "Fine Arts" in the Vitebsk Governorate, appointed in 1918.

He was able to bring various artists of the Russian avant-garde (e.g., Kazimir Malevich, El Lissitzky, Ivan Albertovich Puni) to Vitebsk, where they did not suffer from hunger like in the rest of Russia; in addition, Chagall organized exhibitions and took care of the opening and reopening of museums.

A dispute with Malevich, whose painting "Black Square on a White Ground" set the direction of the new Russian art, led to Chagall's resignation from the directorship of the Academy of Arts in 1920. Chagall's colorful and imaginative art did not fit into such a conception of "pure painting," and he himself no longer fit into the official ideology. After a lean period in and around Moscow, Chagall left for Berlin in 1922.

Walden had meanwhile sold the paintings left behind by Chagall in Berlin and deposited the proceeds into an account, but due to inflation in Germany this was not a financial security for the Chagall family, but rather a worthless asset.

1923 – 1941 (France)

So in 1923, Chagall moved with his family to Paris, where he received a commission from the publisher Ambroise Vollard Nikolai Gogol's "Dead Souls ." He produced 96 etchings by 1927. This marked the beginning of a highly productive period. Chagall recreated the lost paintings and received another illustration commission from Vollard (the fables of Jean de La Fontaine), which kept him busy until 1931. His first exhibition took place in New York in 1926, and a contract with art dealer Bernheim finally freed the family from all financial worries.

Many trips followed, to the South of France, to Palestine to prepare Bible illustrations for Vollard (which Chagall would work on from 1931 to 1939 and again from 1952 to 1956), and to the Netherlands. The first major Chagall retrospective place at the Kunsthalle in Basel in 1933.

Very early on, the sensitive artist sensed the threat emanating from the Third Reich to the Jewish world; even this incredible artist could only escape the horror-bringing stupidity of Germany at that time through much turmoil and danger; the few paintings from this period of paralyzed creative power express his horror.

1941 – 1948 (United States)

After a wandering through Italy and France, the Chagall family is saved by emigrating to America , where they arrive on June 23, 1941.

In New York, Chagall met friends such as Breton, Léger, Mondrian and Masson, who had already been able to emigrate before him.

He was initially able to produce some more optimistic works, including stage designs and ballet costumes for a ballet set to Tchaikovsky's music, which premiered in Mexico City. However, the European war continued to preoccupy him and is reflected in several famous paintings, such as "The War" and "The Crucifixion in Yellow." When his wife Bella died of a viral infection in 1944, Chagall fell into a depression and was unable to paint for months. In 1945, he began a new relationship with Virginia Haggard McNeil, with whom he had a son, David McNeil, in 1946. He gradually began painting again at this time.

In the same year, he designed the sets for Stravinsky's "The Firebird" at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, followed in 1946 by a Chagall retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art . Although Chagall seemingly returned from exile to his creative home of Paris in 1946, he also longed for his new home, where he had since established a new studio in a small village in the Catskill Mountains (in northern New York).

1948 – 1985 (France)

Chagall repeatedly travels back and forth between the old and the new world; in 1947 he has exhibitions in Paris, Amsterdam and London, but in 1948 Chagall and Virginia finally decide to settle in France with their children.

Since 1949, Chagall lived in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat on the Côte d'Azur . Exhibitions and awards followed in Europe; Chagall published lithographs and created murals and began working with ceramics for the first time. In 1950, a major retrospective exhibition was held at the Kunsthaus Zürich. He separated from Virginia and in July 1952 married the Russian Valentina Brodsky ("Vawa"), a marriage that boosted his creative energy.

With her, he traveled to Greece to work on new lithographic commissions; in the 1950s, the La Fontaine fables with his illustrations were published, followed in 1957 by the long-worked Bible illustrations, and in 1961 by "Daphnis and Chloe." Chagall dedicated a series of paintings to Paris, his "second Vitebsk," exhibited in Germany and Switzerland, opened a gallery in Haifa (Israel) in 1957, and gave lectures in Chicago and Brussels. During this period, he also began working on stained-glass windows for churches ; the designs for the windows of Metz Cathedral were created in 1958.

Chagall, already over 70 years old, is now admired all over the world; he is appointed an honorary member of art academies, awarded an honorary doctorate and an honorary citizen, and is invited to documenta ; many retrospectives take place worldwide, and many more church fathers want to see their cathedrals or synagogues equipped with stained glass windows by Chagall, who brings stained glass painting to a new, unique flowering through his painting style.

In 1963, Chagall was chosen to decorate the new ceiling of the Paris Opera. This was a great honor, as it was a magnificent 19th-century building and a historic site. France's Minister of Culture wanted something unique, and his choice for the artist fell on Chagall.

The choice of artist was not without controversy and sparked a heated debate: on the one hand, the fact that a Russian Jew was adorning a French landmark was a point of contention. On the other hand, critics voiced their opposition, arguing that they would have preferred to prevent a contemporary artist from painting the ceiling of the historic building.

Despite all opposition, Chagall persevered with the monumental task, which took a year to complete. After the announcement of the new ceiling, "even the greatest opponents of the commission seemed to fall silent." Around this time, he also created the magnificent Peace Window (1967) at the UN headquarters in New York.

Until his death in March 1985 at almost 98 years of age in France, Chagall was constantly in demand and busy, receiving a steady stream of honors. In his multifaceted life, the painter-poet personally witnessed the great hopes and crushing disappointments of the Russian Revolution, as well as the near-complete annihilation of European Jewry and the total destruction of his hometown.

Chagall's last painting was a commission for the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago . The painting, titled Job (1985) , was completed, but Chagall died shortly before its finishing.

His love for his diverse works – whether mosaics, lithographs, stained glass windows, paintings or other forms of expression – has never waned since.

Marc Chagall's artistic style characteristics

One of his most famous quotes is: “Shall I paint the earth, the sky, my heart? The cities that burn, my brothers who flee? My eyes full of tears. Where shall I run and flee to, to whom?” This reflects his search for identity, inspiration, and meaning in his work.

Chagall worked at various points in his career in many radical modernist styles, including Cubism, Suprematism, and Surrealism, which may have encouraged him to work in a completely abstract style. However, he rejected each of them successively and remained committed to figurative and narrative art , making him one of the most prominent representatives of the more traditional approach to modernism .

Chagall's Jewish identity remained important to him throughout his life, and many of his works can be described as an attempt to reconcile modernist art Christian themes , which appealed to his taste for narrative and allegory .

In the 1920s, Chagall was considered a kindred spirit by the emerging Surrealists, and although he borrowed from them, he ultimately rejected their more conceptual themes. Nevertheless, a dreamlike quality is inherent in almost all of Chagall's work ; as the poet and critic Guillaume Apollinaire once said, Chagall's work is "supernatural .

“Fantasy,” “dreamlike,” and “surreal” are among the most frequently used terms in connection with Chagall’s various murals, stained-glass windows, paintings, and artworks in general. Although critics question his work for its lack of “realism,” many revel in the visual appeal of his pieces because of the visual poetry they evoke.

But images of flying fish, angels, cows, horses, various animals and lovers on the water seem to be representations of something else, and much of his art seems imbued with symbolism .

Chagall once remarked:

"If a symbol should be discovered in one of my paintings, this was not my intention. It is something that can be found later and interpreted according to taste."

Themes, symbolism and allegory in Chagall's works

Despite these reactions, people have begun to assign their corresponding meanings to the “symbols” in his paintings.

Political and religious issues

Representation and symbolism are perhaps most evident in Chagall's fascinating and controversial 1938 "White Crucifixion" "Yellow Crucifixion" , in which his talent for integrating various elements and colors, as well as his predilection for the religious, stemming from his Jewish-Belarusian roots, are on full display.

Interpretations regarding both works suggest that the paintings were Chagall's reactions to the Stalin regime, the purging of the Jews during the Nazi era, and the fact that the person of Jesus is primarily present as a non-Messiah in abundance, unable to free Jewish people from their suffering.

Apart from the obvious and unabashed depiction of Jesus on the cross, elements of Jewish tribulation exist in the form of the Torah scroll, Jewish candelabras, burning communities, displaced families, and an angel who ironically seems to be delivering a message of peace and hope.

Hometown Vitebsk

His early paintings often depict scenes from Vitebsk, the region where he was born and raised. They are true to life and convey a sense of direct experience, often accompanied by a visually striking image. Some of these works include Snow, Winter in Vitebsk (1911) and Death (1911) .

In his later years, his themes became increasingly melodramatic. He did not attempt to depict the truth realistically, but instead created his own atmosphere through fiction and surrealism.

However, it was the images and memories of his childhood in Belarus that fueled his creativity for more than 70 years. Certain characteristics in his paintings remained constant and visible throughout his career. One of these was his choice of subjects and the way he depicted them.

Self-portrait with seven fingers

Another visually fascinating painting by Chagall was his self-portrait, in which he depicts himself painting with seven fingers on his left hand. This could perhaps be attributed to the fact that, despite incorporating his own style, Chagall chose to explore various art forms and integrate his particular convictions into them. As Chagall is quoted as saying, "I work in whatever medium pleases me at the moment."

horses

Horses, closely associated with freedom, are abundant "The Flying Carriage", "Circus", "I and the Village"

Churches and biblical motifs

Here, too, the religious undertones of his subject matter take shape in the literal depictions of faith and religion. Church structures are represented in the raw and typical nature of a house with a cross on the roof. Churches are depicted in his various works on canvases, stained glass windows, murals, and other media.

The circus

Apart from the literal depiction of a circus and carnivalesque setting in his painting “Circus” , all of Chagall’s works are executed in a manner that seems to combine a circus of elements, colors and ideologies into a visceral art experience.

This is a limited edition giclée print by Marc Chagall entitled “DANCE AND THE CIRCUS”. It was auctioned on Catawiki. You can find Marc Chagall art auctions

• Art prints on Catawiki
• Marc Chagall – Originals on Artnet

Limited edition museum-quality reproductions of important works by the surrealist painter can be found at ars mundi .

Engaging with the true message of his symbolically rich work could occupy generations of art theorists.

Comprehensive retrospective

Artworks by Marc Chagall in our Pinterest Collection

Browse through hundreds of his works – many of them available as limited edition lithographs, high-quality giclée prints, or even as originals

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The good-natured cheerfulness and friendliness of most of his paintings ( Der Spiegel, 13/1959 ), preserved by an artist who endured the hell of National Socialism, can surely uplift many a severely troubled person. You may simply enjoy these delightful works of art, in which winged fish play the violin, cows lie on rooftops, and you can discover a tiny couple in love amidst a bouquet of flowers.

The following video presents a presentation of some of his works set to the wonderful music of Pachelbel's Canon: