By Deena Sherman

For a Hasidic Jew born in a Russian village in 1887 to become a world-renowned artist was an almost unimaginable feat. With the exception of a few who were permitted in cities, Jews were forced to live in the so-called Pale of Settlement where pogroms and repression reigned. In Marc Chagall’s traditional community, an artist was a foreign concept to be regarded with suspicion. Indeed, the word “artist” was rarely uttered.

Chagall became an artist to escape a world of poverty and generations of tradition. Chagall’s father hauled brine-soaked barrels as a fishmonger’s assistant his entire life. Despite the poverty, Chagall and his eight younger siblings had a childhood that was rich with love
and warmth from the large extended family that Chagall described in his autobiography, My Life.

With 27 rubles (thrown at him by his father on his departure), Chagall snuck into St. Petersburg to study art and was later helped by wealthy Jews such as Max Vinaver who eventually sent the 23-year-old Chagall to Paris. Paris was an eye-opener in many ways for Chagall who was exposed, for instance, to the vibrant and intense colors of Matisse, who was featured in the April Art & Sleep section.

Chagall became an artist to escape a world of poverty and generations of tradition. Chagall’s father hauled brine-soaked barrels as a fishmonger’s assistant his entire life. Despite the poverty, Chagall and his eight younger siblings had a childhood that was rich with love
and warmth from the large extended family that Chagall described in his autobiography, My Life.

With 27 rubles (thrown at him by his father on his departure), Chagall snuck into St. Petersburg to study art and was later helped by wealthy Jews such as Max Vinaver who eventually sent the 23-year-old Chagall to Paris. Paris was an eye-opener in many ways for Chagall who was exposed, for instance, to the vibrant and intense colors of Matisse, who was featured in the April Art & Sleep section.

In 1914, Chagall went back to his hometown, Vitebsk, to celebrate his sister’s wedding and to visit his fiancée Bella. The holiday coincided with the outbreak of World War I and he was unable to return to Paris. He married Bella and their first child, Ida, was born in 1916. They moved back to France after the war and then, in 1941, sought sanctuary in the United States when France became too dangerous for Jews.

By then, Chagall was famous and widely sought after as an artist. He had many exhibitions and commissions, including some for his stained glass windows. His marriage was truly a love affair, and when Bella died of a viral infection before the end of World War II, a grief-stricken Chagall stopped painting for almost nine months.

Although Chagall admired the US, he never really felt at home there – in large part because he never mastered the English language. He returned to France in 1948 and lived there until his death in 1985 at the age of 97.

Chagall’s work is often spattered with angels, upside-down heads and donkeys with umbrellas. For this reason his work is perhaps best described as hallucinatory realism in which an everyday story takes on a strange and mystical element. Chagall left his hometown as a young man – but his childhood and his culture is ever-present in his art.

Sources:
Polonsky, Gill. Chagall. Phaidon Press. June 25, 1998.
Chagall, Marc. My Life. June 2003.
“Mark Chagall (Mark Zakkarovich Sharal)”
http://www.theartgallery.com.au/ArtEducation/greatartists/Chagall/about/.