MARC CHAGALL

Jewish, Marc Chagall was born at Vitebsk 7th July 1887. In 1906 he he started his studies at St Petersburg and in 1909, returning to his home town in Lithuania, he met Bella Rosenfeld, his future wife. In 1910 Vinaver, editor of the magazine Voshod, offered him the chance of going to Paris for four years where he exhibited for the first time at the Salon des Independants. Here he came in contact with new artistic currents including, above all, Fauvism, Budism, and the Orphism of Delaunay. In 1914 he had his first personal exhibition in Berlin. Returning to Vitebsk in 1915,he married Bella. Due to the war he remained in Russia till 1922 and was nominated Commissioner for Fine Arts in his home town, but in 1920 he resigned from the post. The free didactics of Chagall clashed with the authoritarianism of Malevfic who subjected the artist to his severe methodology. He went to Moscow and started work on the decoration of the Jewish state theatre. In 1923 he returned to Berlin and later to Paris. Besides designing stage sets, he now illustrated books (Gogol, La Fontaine, Boccaccio, etc.); the 20's and 30's were distinquished by an intensive graphic production. In 1930 he went for the first time to Palestine and the the following year his autobiogaphy came out, "Ma vie" (in yddish), translated by his wife into French. In 1933 he travelled in Italy, Holland, England and Spain. At Mannheim the Nazies burned his works. In 1941 Chagall fled to New York. Bella died in 1944 and he was desperate, unable to work for about ten months. The following year he designed the sets and costumes for Fire-bird . Then, in 1946 at the Museum of Modern Art of New York in New York he had a great retrospective show. 1947 saw him in Paris and in 1949 he settled at Vence where he took up ceramics. He met Valentina (Vava) Brodskj in 1951 and married her in July of the same year. In the early sixties he worked at the stained glass windows of the Cathedral of Metz and of the Synagogue of the Medical Center Haddash of Jerusalem. The ceilings of the Paris Opera House were painted in 1964, and the stained glass windows of the headquarters of the United Nations . On his birthday, in 1973, the Marc Chagall Musée National Message Biblique of Nice was inaugurated, and the following year there was a tremendous reception in Chicago for the unveiling of his mosaic The Four Seasons. Then he received the insignia of the grand cross of the Legion of Honour in France, and the honoarary citizenship of Jerusalem. He was showered with honours thanks to various retrospective shows. Then, 28th March 1985, he died in his house at Saint-Paul-de-Vence.