Marc Chagall was born on July 7, 1887, in Vitebsk, Russia, to a close knit Jewish family that included ten children. His father was a clerk in a herring factory and his mother worked in the family home and ran a grocery store. Although never formally embracing a particular art style, Chagall’s works have been praised as having a major impact on Surrealism—a movement that expressed the subconscious in fantastical imagery—and contain elements of Cubism, Orphism and Fauvism.
The ubiquitous courtyard animals of his childhood, strong family heritage and faith, native village and the vitality of Paris became the major themes in his art. These first impressions lingered in Chagall’s mind and created unique autobiographical images that included floating lovers, massive bouquets of joyful flowers, the gentle horse or cow, the watchful rooster, his beloved muse-first wife, Bella, and the merriment of the circus.
After seeing a classmate’s sketch from a magazine, Chagall took up drawing—covering his room in his creations. He tells of warily approaching his Mother with his goal: “…as my mother was putting bread in the oven, I went up to her and, taking her by the flour-smeared elbow, I said to her Mama—I want to be a painter”. She, of course, preferred that he become a clerk, an accountant or a photographer’s assistant.
Chagall took classes at the local art school where he would be the only pupil who painted with violet. In 1907 he moved to St. Petersburg where he studied briefly with the famed Russian painter Leon Bakst (1866-1924). It was in Bakst’s studio where he would first see the Modern Art that was sweeping Paris. At the age of 21, the then unknown artist would paint his first fiddler on the roof—a tribute to his Uncle Neuch who, according to the artist, played the violin “like a cobbler”.
Aided by a patron, Chagall moved to Paris in 1910 befriending avant-garde poets, writers and painters while living at the dilapidated “La Ruche” (The Beehive) near the slaughterhouses in Montparnasse. He would participate in the 1912-1914 Paris salons and have his first one man show in Germany in 1914.
At the outbreak of WWI Chagall returned to Russia and, in 1915, married his fiancée Bella Rosenfeld—the daughter of a prominent family—she would become his artistic inspiration. Their daughter, Ida (named after the artist’s mother), was born the following year. Upon meeting Bella in 1909, Chagall writes “I feel she has known me always, my childhood, my present life, my future; as if she were watching over me, divining my innermost being, though this is the first time I have seen her. I knew this is she, my wife”. The Chagall family would remain in Russia throughout the war years and move back to Paris in 1923.
In Paris, Chagall received commissions from art dealer Ambroise Vollard that brought him to international attention including the etchings for ‘Les Fables de la Fontaine’ the French equivalent of Aesop’s Fables. Another war, WWII, would force the family to leave France to escape persecution, and settle in the United States. During this time Chagall’s beloved wife Bella tragically died after a brief illness in 1944. Inconsolable, the artist turned his canvases to the wall, unable to work, for almost a year. Bella would remain, however, his constant companion for the rest of his life appearing in his works as a curvaceous nude clad in pearls or an apparition watching over the artist at his easel.
Upon his return to France, Chagall found himself under the guidance of master printer Charles Sorlier at Mourlot Frères Atelier—a well known lithography studio. According to Sorlier, the partnership would be fruitful—“He learned like an inquisitive apprentice boy. As stubborn as he was eager, under my guidance he tried out every imaginable technique. No craftsman will ever be prouder than I was to have such a gifted apprentice under by tutelage. For many long months he came and worked tirelessly, and his dissatisfaction allowed him to have only a few of his first attempts printed”.
The subsequent results were remarkable with more than 1000 original lithographs created with stunning color techniques still unparalleled today. Chagall would complete many lithographic series including ‘The Bible’, ‘The Story of Exodus’, ‘The Circus’, ‘Daphnis and Chloe’ and ‘The Odyssey’ oftentimes traveling to foreign countries for inspiration and using up to 25 different lithographic plates per print to achieve the perfect expression of colors. His mastery as a colorist was noted by Picasso who said “When Matisse dies, Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what color really is”.
Marc Chagall died at his Saint Paul de Vence home in March 1985 at the age of 97 with his second wife Vava, at his side—a highly regarded, decorated and exhibited artist—the last in the great line of 20th Century Modern Masters.
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