Marc Chagall

Who is Marc Chagall?

Marc Chagall was born Moishe Shagal into a Hasidic Jewish family in Vitebsk, then part of the Russian Empire and now a major city in Belarus. He studied art in Saint Petersburg before moving to Paris in 1910, where he absorbed Cubist and Fauvist influences while developing a highly personal, dreamlike visual language filled with floating figures, fiddlers, lovers, and imagery drawn from his Vitebsk childhood and Jewish folklore. After briefly returning to revolutionary Russia, where he founded an art school in Vitebsk and served as a local arts commissar, he eventually settled permanently in France and later became a French citizen. Over a career spanning more than seven decades he worked across painting, stained glass, ceramics, and theatrical design, producing famous works such as "I and the Village" and the ceiling of the Paris Opera Garnier, as well as stained-glass windows for Reims Cathedral and the United Nations. Widely regarded as one of the twentieth century's foremost modernist artists, Chagall is celebrated in Belarus today through the Marc Chagall Museum in his native Vitebsk.

Sources: Marc Chagall Museum, Vitebsk, Belarus · Centre Pompidou, Chagall biographical archives · Encyclopedia Britannica, entry on Marc Chagall