Marc Chagall

1887-1985

Marc Chagall emerged from the Jewish shtetl of Vitebsk to become one of the twentieth century's greatest colorists. Born in 1887 in what is now Belarus, he trained in Saint Petersburg under Léon Bakst before moving to Paris in 1910, where he synthesized Cubism, Symbolism, and Fauvism into a deeply personal visual language rooted in Eastern European Jewish folklore. His dreamlike paintings—of lovers, fiddlers, and floating figures—were animated by an intensity of color that Picasso recognized as unmatched. After Nazi persecution drove him to America during World War II, he returned to France in 1948 and settled on the Côte d'Azur. There he worked across media: monumental ceiling paintings, stained glass windows for cathedrals and synagogues across Europe and beyond, ceramics, and prints. His devotion to his first wife Bella informed his work throughout his life, earning him the epithet "painter of love." He died in Saint-Paul-de-Vence in 1985.