Marc Chagall (1887-1985)
Of Russian origin, born into a very religious Jewish family with a strong attachment to folklore, Marc Chagall is one of those great figures of twentieth-century art who forged a highly personal body of work. He fashioned a poetic, ethereal space, often highly colored, inhabited by recurring symbolic motifs – the rooster, the donkey, the couple, the moon, bouquets and angels in particular. In 1964, André Malraux commissioned him to paint the ceiling of the Opéra Garnier in Paris.
Works of art by the artist Marc Chagall
Boris Lipnitzki / Roger-Viollet
Biography of artist Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall, whose real name was Moyshe Segal, was born on July 7, 1887 in Vitebsk, Belarus. The eldest of nine siblings, he grew up in a Jewish family steeped in religious culture. He attended the traditional Jewish elementary school in Vitebsk, before moving on to the city’s secular secondary school.
At the end of 1906, after a brief period in the studio of the painter Jehuda Pen in Vitebsk, he moved to Saint Petersburg. He enrolled at the Drawing School founded by the Imperial Society for the Protection of Fine Arts, which he left in the summer of 1908. He then studied modern art with Léon Bakst, painter and decorator for Serge Diaghilev’s Russian ballets, at the Svanseva School. He discovered “living modern art” and intellectual and literary circles. Bakst taught him the importance of color. He was also inspired by the ancient icons to be found in the churches of St. Petersburg. Russian folklore was another major source of inspiration for his art. At the end of the summer of 1909, he met Bella Rosenfeld, and fell head over heels in love with her.
Thanks to a scholarship, Chagall arrived in Paris in May 1911. He enrolled first at the Académie de la Palette, where he studied with Dunoyer de Segonzac, then at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, where he could work from a model. He discovered Parisian avant-garde art, in particular Fauvism and Cubism, which were essential milestones in his training. His art changed. Color became his principal means of expression, and his palette brightened and colored, combined with a geometric division of form and space.
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