Marc Chagall is a classic artist with a history of famous paintings and an interesting life story. His career in Art was so illustrious and successful that this blog is dedicated to him in its entirety.
Marc Chagall was a Russian-born French Painter who lived from 1887-1985. His famous paintings, each of which we will cover i great detail in this blog, include La Mariee, Paris Opera Ceiling, Promenade, I and the Village, Chryssoie, Autumn in the Village, Bouquet De Fleurs & Acrobat.
Marc Chagall gained success in many art styles including paintings, book illustrations, stained glass, stage sets, ceramics, tapestries and fine art prints. Once his popularity earned him the tag of being “the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century”.
Chagall took inspiration from Belarusian folk-life, and portrayed many Biblical themes that reflected his Jewish heritage. In 1950 he began experimenting with graphic mediums. After meeting with Fernand Mourlot, he often visited Mourlot Studios where he eventually produced close to a thousand different lithographic editions. With the assistance of Charles Sorlier, a master printer working at Mourlot, he spent 30 years exploring the graphic medium that most lends itself to color representation. Charles Sorlier also became one of his closest friends, assistant and counsel until the day of his death.
Chagall’s artworks are difficult to categorize. Working in the pre-World War I Paris art world, he was involved with avant-garde currents, however, his work was consistently on the fringes of popular art movements and emerging trends, including Cubism and Fauvism, among others. He was closely associated with the Paris School and its exponents, including Amedeo Modigliani.
Abounding with references to his childhood, Chagall’s work has also been criticized for slighting some of the turmoil which he experienced. He communicates happiness and optimism to those who view his work strictly in terms of his use of highly vivid colors. Chagall often posed himself, sometimes together with his wife, as an observer of a colored world like that seen through a stained-glass window. Some see the painting, The White Crucifixion, which is rich with intriguing detail, as a denunciation of the Stalin regime, the Nazi Holocaust, and the oppression of Jews in general.
Marc Chagall Books
If you wish to read more about this famous French artist, please see a list of books below about Marc Chagall, his life, his paintings and all his other art.
- Alexander, Sidney, Marc Chagall: A Biography G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1978
- Chagall, Marc, My Life Peter Owen, 1965
- Compton, Susann, Chagall Harry N. Abrams, 1985
- Harshav, Benjamin, ed. Marc Chagall on Art and Culture, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003 ISBN 0804748306
- Kamensky, Aleksandr, Marc Chagall, An Artist From Russia, Trilistnik, Moscow, 2005 (In Russian)
- Kamensky, Aleksandr, Chagall: The Russian Years 1907-1922., Rizzoli, NY, 1988 (Abridged version of Marc Chagall, An Artist From Russia) ISBN 0847810801
- Nikolaj, Aaron, Marc Chagall., (Monographie) Reinbek 2003 (In German)
- Shishanov V.A. Vitebsk Museum of Modern Art – a history of creation and a collection. 1918-1941. – Minsk: Medisont, 2007. – 144 p.
- Wilson, Jonathan Marc Chagall, Schocken, 2007 ISBN 0805242015
- Wullschlanger, Jackie. Chagall: A Biography Knopf, 2008
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