Marc CHAGALL (1887-1985)

The vivid color and charming fantasy world of Marc Chagall make his paintings among the most endearing of modern art. Floating figures amidst bouquets of flowers, musicians, and animals are delightful, enchanting and optimistic. Born in Russia, Marc Chagall emigrated to Paris in the early twentieth century where he participated in the exciting avant-garde art movements of the time. Inspired by Russian folk art, Old Testament stories, and childhood memories, Chagall developed his imaginative style which prefigured Surrealism. Recurring motifs include animals as the cow, cock, horse, and herring; figures as the mother and child, the fiddler, the lovers, and the jester; household furnishings, the pendulum clock, candlestick, windows, houses of his hometown Vitebsk or the skyline of Paris including the Eiffel Tower. Chagall loved the process of creating prints, commenting “When I held a lithographic stone or a copperplate in my hand I thought I was touching a talisman. It seemed to me that I could put all my joys and sorrows in it, everything that touched my life through the years, births, deaths, weddings, flowers, animals, birds, the poor workers, my parents, lovers in the night, the biblical prophets, on the street, at home, in the temple and in heaven. And as I grew older, the tragedy of life within us and around us.” In the 1960s and 1970s, Chagall worked on large-scale projects involving public spaces and important civic and religious buildings, such as stained glass windows for a synagogue in Jerusalem, and the grand murals for the New York Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center.