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Mark
Zakharovich Shagal (1887-1985)
By Alexander Boguslawski
Mark
Zakharovich Shagal, known today all over the world as Marc Chagall, was born on
July 7, 1887, in Vitebsk, Belorussia. He was the oldest of nine brothers. His
father worked in a salt herring factory, his mother took care of the household,
and the grandfather taught the boy religion, instilling in him love for religion
and the knowledge of the Torah. In 1906, Chagall left the Jewish elementary
school he attended and began studying at Yehuda Pen's school of painting in
Vitebsk. In the winter of the same year, Chagall decided to move to St
Petersburg, hoping that his art would find approval there. However, he failed
his first art examination. Putting his pride aside, in 1907 Chagall applied to
and was accepted to the school of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts
in St. Petersburg, directed by Nikolai Roerich. Dissatisfied with the school, he
transferred to Zeidenberg's private art school and later to Zvantseva's School,
where he studied with Mstislav Dobuzhinskii and Lev Bakst. In 1910 he moved to
Paris and found a place in the famous "La Ruche" (Beehive) in the
Vaugirard district, where he met the poets Blaise Cendrars and Guillame
Appolinaire, and the painters Chaim Soutine, Fernand Leger, and Robert Delaunay.
Chagall always stressed the importance of Paris for his development: "In
Paris, it seems to me, I have found everything, but above all, the art of
craftsmanship. I owe all that I have achieved to Paris, to France, whose nature,
men, the very air, were the true school of my life and art." Chagall's
exposure to Cubism
resulted in his attempts to incorporate the Cubist multiple points of view and
geometrical shapes into his compositions, as can be seen in two of his best known early paintings, Me and
My Village (1911) and Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers (1912-13).
ADAM
AND EVE EXPELLED FROM PARADISEqqqq
Two years
later, Chagall contributed to the Salon des Independants and Salon d' automne as
well as to Larionov's Donkey's Tail exhibition in Moscow. In 1913
participated in the Target exhibition and in 1914 had his first one-man
show at the Galerie der Sturm in Berlin. The same year Chagall returned to
Russia and went to Vitebsk, where he married Bella Rosenberg who would become an
inspiration for many of his works. From Vitebsk, the married couple moved to St.
Petersburg (at that time Petrograd). Chagall contributed to the Exhibition of
Painting, 1915, and a year later sent over forty paintings to the Jack of
Diamonds show in Moscow. After the Revolution Chagall was active as an art
educator. He moved back to Vitebsk and in 1919 became a founder, director, and
the most popular teacher at the Vitebsk Academy. However, because he wanted the
school to express all points of view on art, he was ousted by the Malevich
fraction ( SUPREMATISTS) and left
Vitebsk for Moscow.
In Moscow,
Chagall collaborated with the Kamernyi State Jewish Theater and with the
Habimah Theatre. He left Russia in 1922 and after a year in Berlin, settled in
Paris in 1923. In 1924 he had the first major retrospective at the Galerie
Barbazanges-Hoderbart. In the mid twenties produced illustrations to La
Fontaine's Fables. Visited Palestine (1931), Holland (1932) Spain
(1934-5), Poland (1935), and Italy (1937); in 1941 had to leave Germany and
seek shelter in the United States. The death of Bella stopped Chagall's
creativity for many months. After his return to France in 1948, the artist
decided to move to the south of France and in 1950 he settled in
Saint-Paul-de-Vence. Two years later, he married Valentine ("Vava")
Brodskii.
His new wife was an important factor in Chagall’s recovery as a
painter. She encouraged him to undertake large entenar projects, for instance
the cycle Biblical Message. Finished in 1966 and installed seven years
later in the National Museum of the Marc Chagall Biblical Message in Nice, the
paintings (see a selection below) astonish with their vivid colors and their
poetic interpretations of the Biblical texts. Among the largest projects was the
decoration of the ceiling of the Paris Opera (1964), and the murals for the
Metropolitan Opera in New York (1965). He also explored the technique of
stained-glass, designing windows for the Cathedral in Metz (1959-62), for the
Hadassah Hebrew University Medical Center in Jerusalem (1960-1), for the
Cathedral at Reims (1974), and for Saint Etienne Church at Mayence (1978-81). In
the West, Chagall had countless exhibitions and retrospectives. In Russia, after
many years of silence and disregard for the artist, an exhibition of Chagall’s
works from private collections was organized in Novgorod in 1968, and five years
later Chagall was invited to visit Moscow in connection with a small
retrospective of his work. Finally, on the entenary of the artist’s birth a
large exhibition opened at Pushkin Museum in Moscow, and a Chagall Museum
was opened in Vitebsk.
Chagall occupies a unique place in world art. Even though at times
he was slighly influenced by the contemporary developments in arts ( when he
discovered Cubism for example), throughout his long life he was an independent
artist, often criticized for his lack of "realism" or for his lack of
desire to explore non-objective art. The sources of his inspiration are found in
his childhood, in the life of a provincial city of Vitebsk and its Jewish
community, the Scriptures, and, more surprisingly, Russian folk art and icon
painting. He was a poet, and his artistic visions can be considered "poetry
in colors and shapes." He populated his pictures with angels, lovers,
flying cows, fiddlers, circus performers, and roosters, creating lyrical poems
which proclaimed the beauty of all creation, as well as his unwavering belief in
the existence of miracles and in the infinite wisdom of the Creator. Despite
some dark moments in his personal life, he remained an optimist, and with every
brushstroke, every green, blue, or purple face of his violinists, every kiss and
every embrace of his lovers, every little house or church of Vitebsk, every
image of the Eiffel Tower, his paintings seem to sing the "Ode to
Joy." [S.H. and A.B.]
Page:
Lay-out/Design: Margee Baker
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