Marc Chagall French, 1887-1985

Marc Chagall, born Moïche Zakharovitch Chagalov on July 7, 1887, in Liozna, a small village near Vitebsk in the Russian Empire (now Belarus), came from a modest Jewish family. He grew up surrounded by religious traditions and the life of the shtetl, images that would deeply inspire his entire artistic career.

From an early age, Chagall showed a strong talent for drawing. In 1907, he went to study in Saint Petersburg, where he discovered modern art. But it was in Paris, where he arrived in 1910, that he truly found his artistic voice. There, he encountered the avant-garde movements of the time, from Cubism to Fauvism and befriended artists such as Apollinaire, Modigliani, and Delaunay. In his paintings from this period, Chagall combined modern forms with poetic themes drawn from his childhood, his faith, and his deep sense of love.

During the First World War, he returned to Vitebsk, where he married Bella Rosenfeld, his great love and lifelong muse. He founded an art school there before moving to Moscow, and later back to France in 1923. His style, instantly recognizable, is defined by vivid colors, floating figures and a dreamlike blend of reality and fantasy.

Exile marked his life profoundly. As a Jewish artist without a homeland, he fled Nazi-occupied France in 1941 and took refuge in the United States. The war, the loss of his homeland, and Bella’s death in 1944 brought a more melancholic tone to his art, where memory became a sanctuary.

After the war, Chagall returned to France and settled in the south, in Saint-Paul-de-Vence. There he continued to work in many different forms : painting, stained glass, ceramics, mosaics and stage design. Among his most famous creations are the stained-glass windows of the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem, the ceiling of the Paris Opera House, and the biblical paintings now housed in the Marc Chagall National Museum in Nice.

Until his death on March 28, 1985, Marc Chagall remained faithful to his poetic world, filled with lovers, dreamlike animals, and glowing memories. A painter of the heart and of memory, he brought together spirituality, colors and imagination, offering the world a vision both deeply personal and universally human.