Chagall, Marc, Clown with a Yellow Goat, 1982

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.