Marc Chagall  (Russian, 1887- 1985)

   Chagall was born in Vitebsk, Russia. He apprenticed under the portrait painter Pen before traveling to St. Petersburg in 1907 to study first at the Imperial School of Fine Arts and then with theatrical designer Leon Bakst. From 1910 until 1914 Chagall worked in Paris, combining a respect for cubism with his travels into the realms of fantasy and memory. His subjects floated on the canvas, unbound by the laws of gravity. Chagall became Commissar of Fine Arts in Vitebsk in 1917 and founded an academy. He later resigned and became involved in theatrical art in Moscow (including creating murals for the Yiddish theater). Returning to Paris in the 1920s, he made almost two hundred etchings as illustrations for two books. These were not published until 1949 and 1952. At the invitation of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Chagall came to America in 1941. Up to that time his work contained many images of village life in Russia, but it began to reflect the suffering of his people during World War II. In the ensuing years he continued to paint religious subjects. Chagall returned to France in 1948.