Chagall, Marc

Chagall, Marc (märk shəgäl`), 1887–1985, Russian painter. In 1907, Chagall left his native Vitebsk for St. Petersburg, where he studied under L. N. Bakst. In Paris (1910) he began to assimilate cubist characteristics into his expressionistic style. He is considered a forerunner of surrealism. After some years in Russia, Chagall returned to France in 1922, where he spent most of his life. His frequently repeated subject matter was drawn from Jewish life and folklore; he was particularly fond of flower and animal symbols. His major early works included murals for the Jewish State Theater (now in the Tretyakov Mus., Moscow). Among his other well-known works are I and the Village (1911; Mus. of Modern Art, New York City) and The Rabbi of Vitebsk (Art Inst., Chicago). He designed the sets and costumes for Stravinsky's ballet Firebird (1945). Chagall's twelve stained-glass windows, symbolizing the tribes of Israel, were exhibited in Paris and New York City before being installed (1962) in the Hadassah-Hebrew Univ. Medical Center synagogue in Jerusalem. His two vast murals for New York's Metropolitan Opera House, treating symbolically the sources and the triumph of music, were installed in 1966. Much of Chagall's work is rendered with an extraordinary formal inventiveness and a deceptive fairy-tale naïveté. Chagall illustrated numerous books, including Gogol's Dead Souls, La Fontaine's Fables, and Illustrations for the Bible (1956). A museum of his work opened in Nice in 1973. His name is also spelled Shagall.

Bibliography

See his autobiography (1931, tr. 1989); biographies by J.-P. Crespelle (1970), S. Alexander (1978), and H. Keller (1979); studies by F. Meyer (tr. 1964), J. J. Sweeney (1946, repr. 1970), and W. Haftmann (1974).

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Chagall, Marc

(born July 7, 1887, Vitebsk, Belorussia, Russian Empire—died March 28, 1985, Saint-Paul, Alpes-Maritimes, France) Belarusan French painter, printmaker, and designer. After studying painting in St. Petersburg, he moved to Paris in 1910. During the next four years he mixed with the avant-garde there and created what is often considered his best work in the style he would explore for the next 60 years. Often the principal figure in his fantastical works is the painter himself, and memories of Jewish life and folklore in Belarus and themes from the Bible are main sources of imagery. The often whimsical figurative elements in his works are frequently depicted upside down and distributed on the canvas in an arbitrary fashion. In the 1920s he launched a career in printmaking, producing hundreds of etchings for special editions of books. In 1941 he left for New York City, where he designed sets and costumes for Igor Stravinsky's ballet The Firebird. He later produced stained-glass windows and murals for public buildings in Jerusalem, Paris, and the U.S.

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Chagall, Marc 

Born July 7, 1887, in Liozno, near Vitebsk. French painter and graphic artist.

Chagall studied in St. Petersburg from 1907 to 1909 with L. Bakst and others. From 1910 to 1914 he lived in Paris, where he was influenced by cubism. In 1914 he returned to Russia, where he directed the Art School in Vitebsk (from 1917) and participated in the work of the College of Fine Arts. In 1922 he emigrated, settling first in Berlin and then in Paris.

Chagall is one of the most outstanding representatives of modernism. His works are characterized by a keenly subjective perception of reality, reflecting the spiritual crisis of the intelligentsia in the West. The inspiration for most of his works has been his Jewish childhood in a small village, scenes from which he interprets in a symbolic and mystical spirit. Chagall is known for an analogous arrangement of objects in unreal space, linear sketchiness and vagueness, and fantastic and vivid color. Characteristic works are I and My Village (1911, Museum of Modern Art, New York) and Over Vitebsk (1914, private collection, Toronto). Chagall illustrated N. V. Gogol’s Dead Souls (etching, 1923–27) and the Bible (lithograph, 1931–36). He has painted a number of decorative works, including a mural for the Kamernyi Jewish Theater in Moscow (1920, Tret’iakov Gallery, Moscow), the sets for G. Balanchine’s production of I. Stravinsky’s ballet The Firebird (1944–45), and sketches for stained-glass windows for the cathedral in Metz (1958). In 1973, in connection with an exhibit of his lithographs, Chagall visted the USSR.

WORKS

Ma vie. Paris, 1931.

REFERENCES

Efros, A., and Ia. Tugendkhol’d. Iskusstvo Marka Shagala. Moscow, 1918.
Lunacharskii, A. V. “Mark Shagal.” In his book Ob izobrazitel’nom iskusstve, vol. 1. Moscow, 1961.
Meyer, F. Marc Chagall. Cologne, 1961.
Cassou, J. Chagall. Munich-Zurich, 1966.