Marc Chagall painting in his studio in southern France.
Overview
- Caption
- Marc Chagall painting in his studio in southern France.
- Date
-
Circa 1940
- Locale
- Gordes, [Vaucluse] France
- Photo Credit
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Hiram Bingham
Rights & Restrictions
- Photo Source
-
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial MuseumProvenance: Hiram BinghamSource Record ID: Collections: 1992.181
Keywords & Subjects
Administrative Notes
- Biography
- Marc Chagall (formerly Moshe Segal, 1887-1985), Russian Jewish painter. Chagall was born into a large, poor hasidic family in Liozno, Vitebsk. His father earned a living working in the warehouse of a herring monger. After attending cheder as a child, Chagall was sent to a public school, where he discovered his artistic talent. Against the wishes of his father, but with the support of his mother, he enrolled in a local art school. In 1907 Chagall moved to St. Petersburg, where he was awarded a scholarship to study at the Imperial Society for the Furtherance of the Arts. Subsequently, he attended the Svanska school, where he studied under the well-known Jewish artist Leon Bakst. Chagall's work was greatly admired by the Jewish lawyer Maxim Vinaver, who provided the young artist with a monthly allowance so that he could go to Paris. There, he joined a group of Jewish émigré artists from eastern Europe who later became known as the Ecole Juive [Jewish school], a sub-group of the Ecole de Paris [School of Paris]. In the spring of 1914 Chagall opened his first one-man exhibition in Berlin, and from there returned to Vitebsk. The outbreak of the World War I prevented him from returning to Paris. One year later he married Bella Rosenberg, who became a major inspiration of his artistic work, even after her premature death in 1944. After the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 Chagall became commissar for fine arts in Vitebsk, then director of the Free Academy of Art, and finally, designer for the Kamerny State Jewish and Habimah theaters in Moscow. Despite notable artistic successes, Chagall was unable to support his family in Russia and decided to leave in the summer of 1922. After spending a year in Berlin, he settled in Paris, where he gradually gained international recognition. After the rise to power of National Socialism in Germany, 57 of Chagall's works were confiscated from public collections. Some of these paintings were later held up for public ridicule in the Degenerate Art exhibition in Munich in 1937. In the wake of the German invasion of the Low Countries in the spring of 1940, Chagall moved his family to the south of France, where they found a home in the Provencal village of Gordes near Avignon. Chagall dreaded the thought of leaving France and stubbornly refused all efforts to help him emigrate until Varian Fry, director of the Emergency Rescue Committee, arrived with an invitation from New York's Museum of Modern Art to come to the U.S. Chagall initially declined the invitation, fearful of crossing the ocean and moving to an unknown cultural environment. However, after the Vichy government began interning Jews, he realized he had no choice, and on May 7, 1941, he, his wife and daughter, Ida, crossed the border into Spain. From there they traveled to Lisbon, where they found passage on a cargo ship to the US. Chagall was warmly greeted by the American art world, and because he had managed to send ahead all of his paintings and studies, he was able to get back to work soon after his arrival in New York on June 23. Never feeling quite at home in America, Chagall returned to France in 1948, and in 1952 married Valentine Brodsky. For the next three-and-a-half decades Chagall exhibited widely and received numerous commissions. His oeuvre included paintings, etchings, lithographs, sculptures, ceramics and designs for costumes, stage sets, stained glass panels and other media.
[Sources: Encyclopedia Judaica 5:318-24 ; Abramson, Glenda (ed.). The Blackwell Companion to Jewish Culture. Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1989, pp.128-29; Greenfeld, Howard. Marc Chagall, Harry Abrams, Inc., New York, 1990]
- Record last modified:
- 2012-11-06 00:00:00
- This page:
- http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1043087
