Marc Chagall was famous for his impressive glass windows in cathedrals and synagogues, and created cultural treasures of unique value. In addition, the French painter commanded a broad spectrum of artistic skills, was imbued with great creative power until old age, and left behind an oeuvre as immense as it was precious.
(...) Continue readingMarc Chagall – A humble childhood; education in St. Petersburg
Marc Chagall was born Moische Chazkelewitsch Schagal on 6 July 1887 in a suburb of Witebsk in the former Russian empire, the eldest of nine children of a poor Jewish orthodox working-class family. As a Jew, he was only permitted to attend school because his mother bribed the teacher. As well as singing and violin, Marc Chagall was primarily interested in drawing, and learnt the basics of painting with the Jewish-Lithuanian painter Jehuda Pen, who also introduced him to turn-of-the-century portrait and genre painting. In order to expand his education, Chagall went to St. Petersburg, which again was only possible for him as a Jew with special permission. He failed the admissions exam for the St. Petersburg Art Academy, however, and so attended the private school of Nicholas Roerich and Jelisaweta Swanzew where he was taught the new way of painting by, among others, the stage and costume designer Léon Bakst. He was still a student when he painted one of his most famous works, the black and white picture The Death.
Marked by the Russian Revolution; first bible illustrations
With the sale of two pictures and help from his sponsor Maxim Winawer, Marc Chagall was able to finance a study trip to Paris where he made contact with artists such as Guillaume Apollinaire, Blaise Cendrars, Robert Delaunay, Fernand Léger, to name a few, and discovered the technique of gouache, of which he made extensive use. Through his acquaintance with the German art dealer Herwarth Walden, he was able to take part in the First Autumn Salon in Berlin, and it was in Walden’s gallery that Chagall had his first solo exhibition. After the First World War, as a supporter of the revolution, he was appointed Commissar for Fine Arts by the Marxist cultural politician Lunatscharski, and founded an art school, for which he was able to recruit great Russian avant-gardists such as El Lissitzky and Kasimir Malewitsch as teachers. An argument with Malewitsch, however, led Marc Chagall back to Paris via Moscow and Berlin. There he illustrated the novel The Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol and the La Fontaines fables, and also began his famous bible illustrations. To strike the right note for these, he made a special trip to Palestine.
Flight to the USA; worldwide success with glass paintings and murals
As a result of the National Socialist persecution of Jews in Europe, Marc Chagall emigrated to the USA. The sudden death of his first wife Bella Rosenfeld - who often featured with their daughter as motif in his early pictures – affected the artist deeply and triggered his depression, preventing him from painting for many months. He found transitional happiness, however, with the housewife Virginia Haggard McNeil, 28 years his junior, with their son, David McNeil, following in his father’s footsteps and becoming a painter. The relationship broke down, not least because of the primacy of art, which Chagall placed above everything else. He eventually found the longed-for muse and supporter in his second wife Walentina Brodsky, and the constellation produced an extensive body of work, including the famous windows of the cathedrals in Metz and Reims, as well as the Hadassah University Clinic synagogue in Jerusalem. Chagall himself always insisted that a truly great artist must also be a truly great and therefore good person.
Marc Chagall died highly esteemed and advanced in years on 28 March 1985 in Saint-Paul de Vence in his adopted country of France. He was almost 100 years old.
Marc Chagall - Works that have already been sold at Kunsthaus Lempertz:
