Le rat et l'éléphant, 1952

Marc Chagall   Best sellers Master Artists

Marc Chagall is a painter and printmaker born in Belarus in 1887.

He was raised by his Jewish mother, who passed on to him the passion of man and made him read the Bible. Vitebsk, the area where he grew up, would always represent his childhood paradise and later greatly influence his artistic work.

He studied at the School of Fine Arts of Saint-Petersburg and then worked in a studio. He was pupil of Leon Bakst, who introduced him to Bella Rosenfeld, with whom he fell in love.

In 1910, he moved to Paris. There, he discovered Fauvism as the movement was fading, and Cubism just as it was emerging. He was fascinated by the joyful colors of Fauvism and by Cubism's deconstruction of objects. Even if he was living in Paris, Marc Chagall never forgot his native country, Russia, and never ceased to be inspire by it. In fact, the Jewish culture in which he grew up is always present in his work.

In Paris, Marc Chagall met Blaise Cendrars, Robert Delaunay and Guillaume Apollinaire with whom he became friends.

In 1914, He returned to Vitebsk, thinking he would only stay there a short while, but the First World War preventing him from coming back to France. He Married Bella with whom he had a daughter. He painted the life of the Jewish community, persecuted because they were suspected of collaborating with the Russians. After the Revolution, he let to Moscow, where he worked for the Jewish Art Theater.

Back in Paris, his friend Ambroise Vollard, ask him to do some illustrations for the" Fables de La Fontaine" and for the Bible. He did several gouaches for the religious texts that he considered to be " the biggest source of poetry of all time". He then did a collection of etchings about the Old Testament, which he donated to the French government. This latter has been exhibited in the Louvre and then at the National Museum of Biblical messages in Nice, which was later named National Museum Marc Chagall.

Marc Chagall can not be associated to one particular movement, since the artist preferred to combine several styles. However In his work we can find characteristics of surrealism and Neo-Primitivism. Marc Chagall created his paintings and prints inspired by his own intimate life.

He died in 1985 in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France.