Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall was a Russian and French artist, graphic artist, painter, stage designer, and poet (in Yiddish) of Jewish origin, one of the most prominent representatives of the artistic avant-garde of the 20th century. Marc Zakharovich Chagall (born Moishe Shagal, or, in Russian transcription, Movsha Khatskelevich Shagalov) was born on 24 June (6 July) 1887 into a Jewish family in the shtetl of Liozno near Vitebsk (40 km to the west), or, according to other sources, in Vitebsk itself, within the Pale of Settlement of the Russian Empire. Both the future artist’s father, Khatskl-Mordkhe (in Russian, Khatskel-Mordukh), and his mother, Feyge-Ite, came from Liozno, and Marc Chagall spent a significant part of his childhood in his grandfather’s house in that shtetl. From 1900 to 1905, Chagall studied at the four-year school in Vitebsk. It was in Vitebsk that the artist met his future wife, his only muse, Bella Rosenfeld. Bella came from a wealthy family of Vitebsk jewelers. In 1906 he studied fine arts at the art school of the Vitebsk painter Yu. M. Pen, then moved to St. Petersburg (his father had “thrown 27 rubles under the table”) and for two seasons studied at the Drawing School of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, headed by N. K. Roerich. From 1909 to 1911, Chagall continued his studies with L. S. Bakst at E. N. Zvantseva’s private art school. In 1911, with the scholarship he received, he went to Paris, where he continued his studies and met artists and avant-garde poets living in the French capital. Chagall fell in love with Paris at once. In 1914, Chagall returned to Vitebsk. He had planned to stay for three months, but remained for 10 years: war, revolution... On 25 July 1915, the artist married Bella. They had a daughter, Ida, who later became a biographer and researcher of Chagall’s