Did Marc Chagall Like to Tell Stories of His Art Work

10 things to know most Marc Chagall

Alastair Smart looks at the life and piece of work of the Russian artist — born Moyshe Segal, revered by Picasso and the Surrealists, and a defining effigy in the history of European Modernism

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The eldest of nine children, Marc Chagall was built-in Moyshe Segal, in July 1887, in an area of the Russian Empire that'due south today function of Belarus. His father, Zachar, hauled barrels for a herring merchant. Although Chagall was exaggerating in his memoir, My Life, when he compared Zachar to a 'galley slave', the work was apparently and so difficult that information technology made him determined to avoid a similar fate, and to pursue his dream of becoming an creative person. 'My heart used to twist similar a Turkish bagel equally I saw my father lift those weights,' Chagall wrote.

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• He would leave Vitebsk, just Vitebsk would never leave him

In 1906, aged 19, Chagall moved to the Russian capital, St Petersburg, where he attended art school. His home town became the principal source of inspiration for his paintings at this time — as it would be throughout his career, even though he spent near of his life in faraway places. Information technology's often said that revisiting Vitebsk on canvass offered Chagall a cornball retreat into childhood, no matter how harsh the realities of his adult life (i marked, at dissimilar times, past war, revolution and flight).

The bearded human, attired in the long night glaze and Kashkel cap typically worn past the poor Jewish communities in Vitebsk, is a recurrent presence in his paintings, paying tribute to the artist's homeland and the culture that shaped him.

Marc Chagall (1887-1985), Etude cascade la Nuit de Vence, painted in 1953. 12½ x 17½ in (31.vii x 44.5 cm). Estimate: £400,000-600,000. Offered in Impressionist and Modern Art Mean solar day Sale on 28 February 2019 at Christie'southward in London

The rooster and the violinist that appear inÉtude pour la Nuit de Venceare too among the creative person'due south most recurrent motifs, referencing Chagall's rural upbringing and Jewish heritage.

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• He absorbed influences from all sides

Chagall'south originality lay in his very personal synthesis of the influences he seized on from all sides. As well as Russian folk art and Orthodox Church building icons, he drew on Jewish artistic tradition, too — not to mention contemporary Western piece of work, after he moved to Paris in 1911.

The subdued palette of his earlier paintings gave way to passages of strong, pure color inspired by the Fauves. Used for emotional and/or mystical effect, intense color would become a characteristic of Chagall's art thereafter.

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• Chagall savoured France's 'light of freedom'

Upon moving to Paris, the artist changed his name to the French-sounding Marc Chagall. Paris was likewise where he met Pablo Picasso. Never one to lavish praise on a rival unduly, the Spaniard said of the Russian, 'I don't know where he gets those images from; he must have an angel in his head.'

For a while, Chagall dabbled with Cubism, but this was a brusque-lived phase — he constitute Cubism too rational and geometric, insisting he didn't treat its 'fill up of square pears on triangular tables'.

Marc Chagall (1887-1985), Fleurs dans la lumière , painted in 1978. 45½ x 35 in (115.6 x 88.9 cm). Gauge: £1,200,000-1,800,000. Offered in Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Auction on 27 February 2019 at Christie's in London

In later on life, from the 1950s onwards, he and Picasso would alive near each other on the French Riviera. Chagall cherished his adopted home for the phenomenon he calledlumière-liberté,or the 'light of freedom', and nowhere was the inspiration oflumière-liberté  more intensely felt than in the south of France, where he e'er kept vases of flowers in his studio. The creative person celebratedlumière-liberté  every bit a joyous renewal of creative possibilities in a series of sumptuous floral paintings, a subject field to which he repeatedly returned.

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• He embraced the Russian Revolution — initially, at least

Chagall returned to Russia to run into his family and fiancée Bella in 1914. He planned to stay just iii months, but the outbreak of Earth War I meant he had to postpone his return to Western Europe indefinitely. In 1917 the Bolshevik Revolution took identify, and Chagall was sympathetic to it.

He was now, finally, granted total citizenship rights in his own country — something which, as a Jew nether the Tsarist regime, he had been denied. He was fifty-fifty appointed Commissar for Art in Vitebsk, although ideological differences soon led to his resignation. Chagall'south work had taken an increasingly fantastical turn by this point, full of green cows and flying horses, and his opponents complained this had little to do with Marx or Lenin.

Marc Chagall (1887-1985), Le cheval à la lune, executed in 1943. 27⅛ 10 xx⅛ in (68.9 x 51 cm). Estimate: £350,000-450,000. Offered in Impressionist and Modern Fine art Evening Auction on 27 February 2019 at Christie'southward in London

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• He was hailed as a godfather and a genius by the Surrealists

Back in Paris in 1923, Surrealism had become the major intellectual movement in the city, and Chagall'due south dreamlike visions from the previous decade were hailed as groundbreaking. According to the Surrealists' leader, André Breton, 'no work was ever then resolutely magical' as Chagall'south. The Russian was officially invited to bring together the movement, just declined.

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• As well every bit whimsical, Chagall could also be political

Levitating lovers are probably the most recurrent characters in Chagall's oeuvre. From 1937 onwards, withal, he also began to depict the Crucifixion on a regular footing. The appointment is no coincidence. Nazi deportations of and atrocities confronting Jews were condign ever more than prevalent.

Chagall'due south response was to appropriate the Crucifixion from Christian artistic tradition and reconsider its subject as a symbol of Jewish martyrdom instead (Jesus himself, of course, having been a Jew). Nazi barbarism was clearly the principal source of inspiration, but Chagall was besides drawing on his experience of anti-Jewish pogroms during his youth in Russia.

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• Chagall spent most of the Second Globe War in New York

France under Vichy rule was a unsafe place for Jews to live, so Chagall and Bella (at present his wife) accepted an invitation of sanctuary in the United states of america. The artistic highlights of his stay included set and costume designs for Léonide Massine's ballet, Aleko, which premiered to great acclaim in 1942. Bella died from a viral infection 2 years later. In memoriam, her image would recur — as lover or bride — in several of Chagall'due south paintings until his own death in 1985.

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• After the Second World War he was feted past collectors, critics and curators

Chagall received a retrospective at both New York'south Museum of Mod Art (MoMA) and the Art Institute of Chicago before returning to France in 1948. His place equally i the key figures of 20th-century fine art was at present bodacious. Chagall started experimenting in an array of new media: tapestry, pottery, mosaics and, most successfully, stained glass. His penchant for large areas of saturated colour fabricated stained glass a logical choice. His almost famous commission was the Peace Window, in celestial blueish, for the United States Secretariat building in New York.

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• He was the last surviving master of European Modernism

In 1967, aged 80, Chagall painted two gigantic murals for the lobby of New York'south Metropolitan Opera House, at Lincoln Center: The Sources of Music and The Triumph of Music, both measuring 30 ft by 36 ft. In glowing reddish and xanthous, he paid homage to the great composers of the by, most prominently Mozart, who flies like an affections above the Manhattan skyline, embracing characters from his opera, The Magic Flute.

Marc Chagall (1887-1985), Le rêve du peintre, painted circa 1980. 39¼ 10 25½ in (99.vii ten 64.8 cm). Estimate: £1,200,000-1,800,000. Offered in Impressionist and Mod Art Evening Sale on 27 Feb 2019 at Christie's in London

Chagall connected to piece of work right upwardly his death in France in 1985, anile 97. Indeed, on the day he passed away, he had been discussing a maquette painting for a tapestry deputed by the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. Buried alongside his 2nd wife, Vava, in the artist's town of Saint Paul de Vence in Provence, Marc Chagall was the last surviving master of European Modernism.

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Source: https://www.christies.com/features/marc-chagall-7810-1.aspx

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