3 Kirkgate Ripon, North Yorkshire, HG4 1PA
tel: 01765 602878 email: thegallery@hornseys.com
www.hornseys.com

art_20th century_artists_
marc chagall

Marc Chagall was born the eldest of nine children to a Jewish family in Vitebsk, Belarus. He was encouraged by his mother at a very early age to paint and began studying art in 1906 under famed local artist Yehuda Pen. Chagall moved to St. Petersburg, where he studied under Nikolai Roerich and joined the school of the ‘Society of Art Supporters’ encountering artists of varying styles. In 1910, he moved to Paris and lived in La Ruche, having Modigliani as a neighbour. His Slav Expressionism was tinged with influences of Daumier, Millet, the Fauves and the Cubists. Essentially a colourist, Chagall was interested in the ‘Simultaneist’ vision of Delaunay and the Luminists of the Section d’Or.

Chagall returned to Vitebsk in 1914 as the First World War broke out and was appointed provincial Commissar for Fine Art, whilst in the role he developed ambitious projects for the local academy. Between the years of 1914 and 1923 Chagall travelled extensively, leaving Vitebsk for Moscow, where he worked in the Jewish theatre. Following this he travelled to Berlin, where he studied the technique of engraving, before returning to Paris.

In Paris he illustrated Gogol’s Dead Souls, La Fontaine’s Fables and the Bible for the publisher Ambrose Vollard. His emblematic irrationality shook off all outside influences including the Surrealists; which Breton so desperately wanted him to be part of. It was colour that governed his compositions, ones, which conjure up mythological representations of his memories, where reality and the imaginary are woven into a single image. Chagall also experimented with ceramics, sculpture and stained glass. Commissions included the Assy baptistery in 1957, the cathedrals of Metz (1960) and Rheims (1974), the Hebrew University Medical Centre Synagogue in Jerusalem (1960) and most famously, the ceiling of the Paris Opera (1963).

Back to artists

thumbnails_click

Dans le Ciel de L' Opera Les Amoureux a L' Isba Maternite Rouge Les Lilas