Chagall is one of the few artists who shaped an entire era in art. It is difficult to name a person who, at least with the edge of his ear, has not heard about this great man with incredible imagination and a unique vision of his place in painting. Until now, Chagall is a unique phenomenon, at least no one has managed to approach the level of which.
The future recognized leader of avant-gardism was born on the outskirts of Vitebsk, which was one of the small towns of the Russian province, in 1887. It was a time of mass persecution of foreigners and the most terrible Jewish pogroms, which caused a massive emigration of the Jewish population to other countries, with a more loyal attitude towards representatives of the Jewish faith. But for little Movshe, all this was ahead. He received education, traditional for Jewish children, having studied the Torah, the Talmud and mastered the Hebrew language. After graduating from four classes of the school, Chagall studied the art of painting in Vitebsk at the school of Yudel Pen.
Realizing that his talent cannot be developed on the periphery, the artist decides to move to St. Petersburg, the then center of artistic thought. The father reluctantly lets him go, allocating a very meager amount and refusing to continue to financially help his son. In the city, Chagall studies at the Roerich school, and then at Bakst. At this time, Mark meets Bella Rosenfeld, who until the end of his life remains a muse and beloved woman, whose face is recognizable in literally every image created by the master.
In 1911, a period of the artist's life begins, during which he was constantly thrown from one city and country to another. Changing his Jewish name Movshe Khatskelevich to a more European sounding Mark Zakharovich, he left on a scholarship to study in, returning home to Vitebsk in 1914 and just hitting the beginning of the First World War. The next year he marries Bella, and a year later they have a daughter, Ida. She subsequently becomes a biographer and researcher of her father's work. At the end of the revolution, Chagall became the Commissioner for Arts in the Vitebsk province and opened his own art school.
In 1920 he moved to work on the design of theatrical performances, and in 1922 he went to Lithuania for his own exhibition with his family. Then Chagall's journey to the West begins. He moved to, and then to, where in 1937 he received citizenship. However, in 1941, the family has to flee from impending fascism in the United States, where Bella dies in 1944. She was not the last woman in the artist's life, but until the moment of his death she remained his love and eternal muse.
Since the 60s, Marc Chagall became interested in large forms and monumental art. His area of interest included murals, including ceiling paintings, tapestries and stained-glass windows. Over the years, the master has created many significant things, including the painting of the ceiling of the Opera Garnier in France and panels for the Metropolitan Opera, mosaics for the National Bank in the United States.
Mark Zakharovich Chagall lived a long life and left a significant mark on the art of the avant-garde. He died at the age of 98, remembering his origin until the end of his life and weaving motifs from the life of his native Vitebsk into his works.
Marc Chagall: "So that my picture shines with joy ..."
Art critic Irina Yazykova explains why the work of an avant-garde artist is a biblical message
The famous avant-garde artist is called "theirs" by three countries - Russia, France and Israel. Marc Chagall, a Jew by birth, was born in the then Russian Vitebsk and met his muse and main love there. He studied in St. Petersburg and Paris, in post-revolutionary Russia he prepared sketches of scenery for performances and designed the Jewish Chamber Theater. But Marc Chagall became a world celebrity in France, where he emigrated with his family in 1922.
Among the works of Chagall are not only paintings. The artist illustrated "Dead Souls" by Gogol, "Fables" by La Fontaine, a collection of stories "A Thousand and One Nights" and the Bible in French. The Chagall Museum in Nice is called the Biblical Message.
And Marc Chagall was also a master of monumental art: he made mosaics, stained glass windows, sculptures, ceramics. He designed many Catholic, Lutheran churches and synagogues in Europe, the United States and Israel.
On the occasion of the 130th anniversary of the artist's birth, art critic Irina Yazykova explains why the work of Marc Chagall cannot be perceived without a religious context, and talks about the main works with a biblical plot.
Irina Yazykova
From an early age, I was fascinated by the Bible. It always seemed to me, and it seems now, that this book is the greatest source of poetry of all time. For a long time I have been looking for her reflection in life and art. The Bible is like nature, and this is the secret I am trying to convey.
- Marc Chagall, catalog for the opening of the Biblical Message Museum in Nice
Many art critics regard Marc Chagall simply as one of the modernist artists of the 20th century. Someone considers him a successor of naive art, someone - a pure modernist. But Chagall is a special phenomenon in the 20th century.
If Malevich built different ideas, issued loud manifestos, Kandinsky developed his philosophy and reflected it in the article "On the Spiritual in Art", then Chagall did not have such a task. He did not declare anything, he simply expressed admiration for God's world in his work. And it seems to me that it is wrong to perceive the work of Marc Chagall outside the religious context.
As a child, I sensed that we all have a disturbing force. That is why my characters were in the sky before the astronauts.
- Marc Chagall, “All this is in my paintings », Literary newspaper, 1985
Walk, 1917-18
Canvas, oil
169.6 × 163.4 cm
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia
For him everything was a miracle: life, love, beauty - all this was a manifestation of a miracle. Miraculously, he almost burned out, not yet born: when the mother's labor began, a fire broke out in the house, and the woman in labor was carried out of the house on the bed. He later captured this incident in a picture and said that he had undergone a baptism of fire. And this, apparently, confirmed Chagall in the idea that he was born for something great. The artist believed that God intended him to portray the beauty of the world.
I don't remember who, most likely, my mother told me that just when I was born - in a small house by the road, behind the prison on the outskirts of Vitebsk - a fire broke out. The entire city was engulfed in fire, including the poor Jewish quarter. The mother and the baby at her feet, along with the bed, were transported to a safe place, on the other side of the city.
But most importantly, I was born dead. I didn't want to live. A sort of, imagine, a pale lump that does not want to live. As if I had seen enough of Chagall's paintings. He was pricked with pins, dipped in a bucket of water. Finally, he mewed faintly.
Birth, 1910
Canvas, oil
65 × 89.5 cm
Art Museum, Zurich, Switzerland
What are the origins of Marc Chagall's religiosity
Marc Chagall was born in Vitebsk, into a Jewish poor and very religious family, where everyone knew the Bible and the commandments well, went to the synagogue, prayed, lit candles on Saturday and had a meal. Chagall learned Hebrew early and began reading the Bible. The Bible became a book that accompanied the artist all his life. And Chagall's religiosity was, one might say, in his blood.
If you only knew how thrilled I was, standing in the synagogue next to my grandfather. How much I, poor man, had to push through before I could get there! And finally I am here, facing the window, with an open prayer book in my hands, and I can admire the view of the place on Saturday afternoon. The blue seemed thicker to the hum of prayer. Houses floated peacefully in space. And every passer-by is in full view.
The service begins, and the grandfather is invited to read a prayer in front of the altar. He prays, sings, plays a complex melody with repetitions. And in my heart it is as if a wheel is spinning under an oil jet. Or as if fresh comb honey is spreading through the veins. Words fail me to describe evening prayer. I thought that all the saints gather on this day in the synagogue.
Saturday 1910
Canvas, oil
90 x 95 cm
Wallraf Richards Museum, Cologne,
Germany.
Faith in the Jewish sense, the Old Testament is a native environment for Marc Chagall. The prophets in his paintings often look the same as the old people from their hometown. He felt them as his blood relatives: this is his story, his family. In addition, the Jews knew their ancestry well up to the seventh, eighth, or even the tenth generation. And when his father opposed his son's decision to study painting, Chagall argued that his ancestor painted the synagogue in the 18th century.
One fine day (and there are no others in the world), when my mother was planting bread in the oven on a long shovel, I went up, touched her elbow soiled with flour and said:
Mom ... I want to be an artist. I will not be a salesman or an accountant. Well, it's enough! It was not for nothing that I felt all the time: something special was about to happen. Judge for yourself, am I like the others? What am I good for?
What? An artist? You're crazy. Let me go, don't bother me putting the bread on. ...
And yet it was decided. We will go to Pan's.
Me and the village, 1911
Canvas, oil
191 × 150.5 cm
Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA
The mother took her son to the Jewish artist Yehudi Pen, who at one time studied with Ilya Repin. Chagall learned classical painting, but did not last long and began to paint as his soul demanded. In this sense, he was absolutely free: the main thing for Chagall was the image, and he strove for its expressiveness.
Scourges and roofs, log cabins and fences and everything that opened further, behind them, delighted me. A chain of houses and booths, windows, gates, chickens, a boarded-up factory, a church, a gentle hill (an abandoned cemetery). Everything is at a glance, if you look out of the attic window, perched on the floor. I poked my head out and breathed in the fresh blue air. Birds flew past.
Over Vitebsk,
1915 year
39 x 31 cm
Art
Philadelphia Museum,
USA
How Marc Chagall differs from all avant-garde artists
What is the avant-garde? Art that goes forward, which does something that was not there before. From this point of view, Chagall is, of course, an avant-garde artist. Each avant-garde artist creates his own world and style. Chagall's world is a world of love, beauty and wonder. And the style and manner of the artist are subordinated to this. This distinguishes him from many artists of the 20th century, who very often depicted tragedies, negative sides of the world, not beauty, but ugliness. And although Chagall also has negative things and tragic images, the main motive is still love and freedom, joy and beauty.
Personally, I'm not sure that theory is such a good thing for art. Impressionism, cubism - they are equally alien to me.
In my opinion, art is primarily a state of mind.
And the soul is sacred for all of us who walk on sinful earth.
The soul is free, it has its own mind, its own logic.
And only there is no falsehood, where the soul itself, spontaneously, reaches the level that is commonly called literature, irrationality.
I do not mean the old realism, not symbolic romanticism, which brought little new, not mythology, not phantasmagoria, but ... but what, Lord, what?
The Betrothed and the Eiffel Tower, 1913
Canvas, oil
77 x 70 cm
Marc Chagall National Museum, Nice, France
In addition, most often avant-garde artists were unbelievers, even anticlerical people, some, however, were inspired by religious art (Goncharova, Petrov-Vodkin, even Malevich), but understood in their own way. And Chagall's religion and the avant-garde are combined.
Apparently, he inherited a lot from Hasidic Judaism. And Hasidim pay great attention to emotions, be it sincere joy or deep repentance before God. Their prayer is expressed not only in words, but also in singing and dancing. This was also transmitted to Chagall and reflected in the character of his painting.
There was a holiday: Sukkot or Simhas Torah. They are looking for grandfather, he is gone. Where, but where is he?
It turns out that he climbed onto the roof, sat on the chimney and gnawed a carrot, enjoying the good weather. A wonderful picture.
Let anyone with delight and relief find in the innocent whims of my relatives the key to my paintings. If my art played no role in the life of my relatives, then their life and their actions, on the contrary, greatly influenced my art.
Feast of Tabernacles(Sukkot), 1916
Canvas, gouache
33 x 41 cm
Rosengart Gallery, Lucerne, Switzerland.
What are the features of the visual language of Marc Chagall
First of all, Chagall has a special, spherical perspective. He sees the world from a bird's eye or angelic flight, wants to embrace the whole world. And this is also connected with his perception of life, the desire to rise above everyday life, above an uncomfortable world. He believed that man was created free, able to fly, for love, namely love, and raises man above the world. Although at the beginning of the twentieth century, everyone to some extent dreamed of flying, overcoming space and time.
Artist, where does that go? What will people say?
So they honored me in my fiance's house, and in the mornings and evenings she dragged me to the workshop warm homemade pies, fried fish, boiled milk, pieces of cloth for draperies and even boards that served me as a palette.
Just open the window - and she is here, and with her azure, love, flowers.
From those ancient times to this day, she, dressed in white or black, soars in my paintings, illuminates my path in art. Not a single painting, not a single engraving, I finish until I hear her "yes" or "no."
Above the city,
1918 year
Canvas, oil
56 x 45 cm
State
Tretyakovskaya
gallery.
Like many artists, Chagall was fascinated by the revolution, and on its first anniversary he was appointed Commissioner of Art in Vitebsk. The artist was supposed to paint streets and make posters. But suddenly a grandiose scandal erupted: instead of red flags, the Bolshevik authorities saw on the posters flying cows, angels and lovers hovering above the ground.
The commissioners did not seem to be so pleased. Why, pray tell, is the cow green and the horse flying across the sky? What do they have in common with Marx and Lenin?
Chagall could not understand the reasons for his discontent, he was for freedom! And flying is the expression of freedom. In addition, then he was in love - the artist adored his young wife Bella. The state when a person can create, love, fly to heaven - in Chagall's understanding, this was absolute freedom. The revolutionary career of the artist ended there.
Birthday, 1915
Oil, cardboard
80.5 × 99.5 cm
Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA.
I won’t be surprised if, a short time after my departure, the city would destroy all traces of my existence in it and generally forget about the artist who, having abandoned his own brushes and paints, suffered, fought to instill Art here, dreamed of turning simple houses into museums, and ordinary people into creators.
But Chagall's path continued and, inspired by his love, he works tirelessly and writes everything that his eye sees and his soul feels. Chagall sees the world transformed. On the one hand, everything in this world is simple, close, recognizable: at home, people, cows ... That is why Chagall's language seems naive, simple, almost childish, but behind this simplicity and naivety an amazing philosophical depth opens up. Sometimes it seems that the drawing is somehow wrong, the compositions are inconsistent, but if you look closely, Chagall builds the pictures very clearly, moreover, he often creates the composition as a piece of music, polyphony. He has sounding colors, memorable images.
Here, in the Louvre, in front of the canvases of Manet, Millet and others, I understood why I could not fit into Russian art in any way.
Why is my language alien to my compatriots?
Why didn't they believe me? Why art circles rejected me. Why in Russia I have always been the fifth wheel in a cart.
Why everything that I do seems strange to Russians, but everything that they do seems contrived to me. So why is that?
I can't talk about it anymore.
I love Russia too much.
Artist over Vitebsk, 1977-78
Canvas, oil
65 × 92 cm
Private collection
How to understand the paintings of Marc Chagall
The world in his paintings is diverse, you can often find incompatible things. Chagall's language is a bit fantastical; you definitely cannot call it a realist. But Chagall knows more about reality than anyone else, he also encourages us to look deeper into it. So, for example, he draws a cow with a human face, and inside it is a calf, a new life. Chagall sees the inner, the hidden. He sees the meaning of this world, knows that God created it with love and wants people to live in love. In all his works there is admiration for the beauty of creation.
I wandered the streets, looking for something and praying: “Lord, you who are hiding in the clouds or behind a shoemaker's house, make it so that my soul, poor soul of a stuttering boy, manifests itself. Show me my way. I do not want to be like others, I want to see the world in my own way.
And in response, the city burst like a violin string, and people, leaving their usual places, began to walk above the ground. My friends sat down to rest on the roof.
The colors mix, turn into wine, and it froths on my canvases.
Artist: to the moon, 1917
Gouache and watercolor on paper
32 × 30 cm
Private collection
Chagall's paintings are very interesting to look at and interpret, every detail means something for him. At first glance, they seem very simple, but you begin to disassemble and see essential things behind ordinary things. At this time, no one has such layering. And this comes precisely from his biblical view of the world.
Dark. Suddenly the ceiling opens, thunder, light - and a swift winged creature bursts into the room in clouds of clouds.
Such a flutter of wings.
Angel! - I think. And I can't open my eyes - too bright light rushed from above. The winged guest flew around all the corners, got up again and flew out into the gap in the ceiling, taking with it the glitter and blue.
And again darkness. I am waking up.
This vision is depicted in my painting "The Phenomenon".
Phenomenon, 1918
Private collection
Biblical stories in the work of Marc Chagall:
main works
Praying Jew (Rabbi of Vitebsk), 1914
Canvas, oil
104 × 84 cm
Museum of Modern Art, Venice, Italy
This picture was painted in Vitebsk. For prayer, Jews put on a cape (tallit), tie phylacteria - boxes with the texts of the Holy Scriptures, and sit, swinging, praying. And so they can pray for hours. Chagall was fascinated by this. And in this picture, he doesn't just show the beauty of black and white, although it's beautifully done. But the inner state is also important here: God and man, life and death, black and white. Chagall always goes beyond what he paints, all the time he wants to show the depth of life.
I also had half a dozen uncles, or a little more. All are real Jews. Some with a thick belly and an empty head, some with a black beard, some with a chestnut beard. A picture, and nothing more.
On Saturdays, Uncle Neh put on an inferior tales and read the Scriptures aloud. He played the violin. He played like a shoemaker. Grandfather loved to listen to him thoughtfully.
Rembrandt alone could comprehend what this old man - a butcher, a merchant, a cantor - was thinking, listening to his son playing the violin in front of the window, splattered with rain splashes and traces of greasy fingers.
Street violinist, 1912-13
Canvas, oil
188 × 158 cm
City Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands
The violinist on the roof is generally a well-known Jewish image. And this is always a symbol of something important, since violinists were invited to the most solemn moments: a wedding or a funeral. As our bells are ringing, the violinist goes to the roof and notifies everyone of joy or sorrow. Like an angel, he connects heaven and earth: in Chagall he stands on the roof with one foot, and on the ground with the other. In this picture we see both the church and the synagogue, as it was in many places. Chagall grew up on this and, along with the Jewish culture, embraced the Christian one.
Around the church, fences, shops, synagogues, uncomplicated and eternal buildings, as in Giotto's frescoes. My sad and cheerful city! As a child, foolishly, I looked at you from our doorstep. And you all opened up to me. If the fence got in the way, I got up on the step. If it wasn't visible anyway, he climbed onto the roof. And what? Grandfather climbed there too. And he looked at you as much as he wanted.
Loneliness, 1933
Canvas, oil
102 × 169 cm
Tel Aviv Art Museum, Israel
This picture is already in the 30s. What do we see here? A seated prophet with Torah or a common Jew. And there and then a cow with a completely human face and a violin nearby, and above them an angel flies. Is that what this picture is about? It is about a person before God. The Jew sits and thinks about his existence.
And everything is spiritualized. In the calf, the image of a calf is visible - a symbol of the victim: a white animal, without a spot of blemish. Man, angel, animal, heaven and earth, Torah and violin - this is the universe, and man comprehends its meaning and reflects on its fate. I would like to recall the words from the Psalm: "What is man, that you remember him, and the son of man, why are you visiting him?" (Psalm 8: 5).
"Bible message" by Marc Chagall -
Bible illustration series
In the 1930s, French publisher Ambroise Vollard invited Marc Chagall to make illustrations for the Bible. The artist, of course, is fascinated by this idea, and he takes it very seriously: taking advantage of the order, he sets off on a trip to Palestine to get a feel for the country about which he read so much, but where he has never been before.
For ten years he has been creating a series of engravings "The Bible message". This cycle was originally conceived in black and white. And in 1956 the Bible with illustrations by Chagall was published as a separate book, it included 105 engravings. After the war, the artist got acquainted with color lithography, and from that moment he continued to illustrate biblical subjects in color. Marc Chagall's illustrations to the Bible are unlike anything else. No one was able to illustrate the Bible in this way. All these illustrations made up the exposition of the Marc Chagall Museum in Nice, which opened in 1973 and was named "The Bible Message".
Illustrations in graphics:
Abraham and three angels
A well-known biblical story about the visit of the forefather Abraham by three messengers of God or God Himself. Abraham is depicted facing us, and we see angels only from the back. Chagall remembered the covenant that God cannot be portrayed, so he does not show the faces of angels. True, in later works he will portray God. In this sense, he was an infinitely free person, for him there was no question: is it possible to draw in this way? As the soul demands, so he draws.
Abraham Mourns Sarah
On the one hand, Chagall is not a realist, but on the other, he depicts some things as deeply as a realistic artist is not always able to. He portrays the grief of Abraham mourning Sarah's death in such a way that it cannot but touch.
Jacob's fight with the angel
The freedom of the artist and the originality of his thinking are sometimes striking. In this figure, the angel, with whom Jacob enters into combat, is clearly not subtle, this is not an easy unearthly creature. It is as if two Jewish teenagers are fighting here, and it is not yet clear who will win. Chagall shows the sacred events through the realities of Jewish life that are familiar to him. But these seemingly such everyday details in no way diminish the high spiritual pathos of these works.
Joseph and Potiphar's wife
The biblical story from the life of Joseph is illustrated in the tradition of naive folk painting. Such a naked beauty with round breasts, reclining on a bed, and a poor youth who does not know how to dodge her. Chagall is not afraid to portray sacred events with irony. For him, Holy Scripture is not a sacred cow that cannot be approached. It is a text that we must ponder over, which gives a projection on our life and helps us to understand ourselves.
Miriam and the women dance after the Exodus
The dance of Miriam and the Israeli wives is full of cheerful passion. Chagall probably saw such women in his own town. He was in close contact with Hasidic culture, and the Hasidim are very musical, and their prayer is expressed, among other things, in dance.
“MY sad and cheerful city! As a child, foolish, I looked at you from our doorstep. And you all opened up to me. If the fence got in the way, I got up on the step. If it wasn't visible anyway, he climbed onto the roof. And I looked at you as much as I wanted. "So with warmth and awe the world famous artist Marc Chagall, whose 130th birthday was celebrated yesterday, described his beloved and hometown Vitebsk. However, he could no doubt refer these words to Liozno ... The painter is directly related to this small urban village - numerous relatives lived there. Some researchers of his work argue with each other, claiming that allegedly at his dacha in the village of Zaolsha, Lioznensky district, he painted his most famous painting "Above the City". They argue, by the way, not only because of this fact. The very perception of the canvases of the master of postmodernism is contradictory. Unusual, incomprehensible, strange, legendary, unique - such motley epithets fly to the address of the artist's work. Well, they all have a right to exist.
In LYOZNO, in secondary school №1, there is a museum of national glory. It is led by Nina Tikhomirova. Nina Konstantinovna devoted almost two decades to collecting biographical information about Chagall. I got interested in the artist for a reason. During the arrival of art critics from Moscow to Liozno in 1972, Nina Konstantinovna heard an amazing version that the world-famous artist was from these places:
Marc Chagall was undeniably born in Liozno. And when he was one year old, his parents moved to Vitebsk. This fact was confirmed by the poet Andrei Voznesensky when he spoke at a conference at the Lenin Library in Moscow in 1992. I then asked him the only question: so where was the painter born? He convincingly answered - in Liozno. Since then, literally bit by bit, I have been collecting information in the archives, from local centenarians, among whom is Chagall's cousin Samuel Efros.
Well, this is one of the versions. According to another, more convincing one (Chagall himself confirmed the fact in his autobiography), his homeland is in Vitebsk. But no one disputes his love for a small provincial village forty kilometers from the regional center. According to the recollections of old-timers, Chagall visited Liozno several times. He also came with his first wife Bella. In the village at the beginning of the 20th century, his relatives lived almost through the house. His cousin Samuel told Nina Tikhomirova that he was always an affable, sociable person. He looked very imposing, dressed with a needle, a white shirt and a black jacket - an integral part of the wardrobe. He recalled how Chagall walked around the town with an easel, painted something, and people who were used to earning every penny by hard physical labor looked at him in surprise and asked: I wonder how this person is going to continue to live? How will he support his family, really for these pictures?
However, the artist spent most of his time at his dacha in the village of Zaolsha, where he had a house. Nature itself was conducive to creativity. Here is what we read about his first acquaintance with the village, which happened shortly after the wedding in 1915: “At last we are alone, in the village. Pine forest, silence, over the trees - a month. A pig grunts in the barn, a horse wanders. Lilac sky. We had not only honey, but also milk month. An army herd grazed nearby, and in the morning we bought buckets of milk from the soldiers. The pie-fed wife made everyone drink me alone. So by the fall, my clothes could hardly fit together. At noon our room looked like a magnificent panel - even now exhibit in Parisian salons. "
Nina Konstantinovna claims that it was at the dacha that he worked on the canvases "House in the town of Liozno", "Pharmacy in Liozno", "Smolenskaya Gazeta", "Selskaya Street". Even the painting "Above the City" was allegedly born in Zaolsha.
"House in the town of Liozno"
There are controversies around her. It is a well-known fact: it has a panoramic view of Vitebsk. However, Chagall's cousin said that it was none other than Liozno. I recognized the town by the church, which is visible in the picture. The same was in Liozno until 1962. However, it is not possible to verify the fact, because the settlement changed after the war.
It was only from archival documents that Nina Konstantinovna managed to find out where the two-story wooden house-estate of the Chagall family (the grandfather and father of the future artist) was located - between the current Lenin and Gagarin streets behind the district House of Culture, the Gastronom store, owned by Elisey Chagall, - between modern cinema "Svitanak" and the regional executive committee. There were also rows where numerous relatives of Mark Zakharovich were briskly trading. Another point of the Chagall route is the place where the hairdresser's shop was located, depicted in the famous painting "A House in the Town of Liozno", just on the territory of the garden of the regional executive committee, closer to the road. Now, however, only a memorial plaque installed at the regional House of Culture, and a bust near the military-patriotic museum remind that the town is associated with the name of Chagall.
WHAT did the family say about young Mark's passion for painting? Didn't approve. One day, my grandfather came across his drawing of a naked woman, and turned away, as if it did not concern him. “Then I realized that my grandfather, just like my wrinkled grandmother, and in general everyone at home, simply did not take my art seriously (what kind of art, if not even similar!) And valued good meat much higher,” writes artist in autobiography.
Chagall's work is also controversial for his contemporaries. However, it is undeniable that the works have their own, individual style. Deputy Director of the Art Center in Vitebsk (a rich collection of the artist's graphics is collected here) Irina Logunova sees the peculiarities of Chagall's paintings in the mastery of color:
He is one of the best colorists. There is a common expression: the best colors that he used are the colors of love. Yes, he loved his characters, the places that he portrayed. This is the whole Chagall. It is not so easy to perceive his painting, because we do not find in it the usual image of man and nature. Realism in its purest form is closer to us - Isaac Levitan with his landscapes, Ivan Shishkin. And here the plots seem to be familiar, but they are laid on an unreal, invented canvas. Therefore, maybe not everyone understands his style, his vision of the world.
The artist's mastery of color is confirmed by Gennady Isakov, Ph.D. in art history, associate professor of the Department of Fine Arts at Vitebsk State University named after P.M. Masherov. However, according to Gennady Petrovich, Chagall still lacked an academic beginning. No wonder, because he studied in fits and starts - for several months. Maybe there was not enough perseverance. And this is read in his paintings. But this is not the only reason why many people do not understand the artist. Yes, despite all attempts to drive him into the framework of one artistic style - impressionism, postmodernism, he had his own style:
"Above the city".
- On the one hand, there is realism (after all, we recognize people, animals), but somehow strange from the point of view of the organization of the composition. Flying people, cabbies who sag, violinists sitting on the roof, a husband who is about to break his wife ... All this is difficult to understand. But you can try. Yes, there are many artists in the world, and everyone chooses for himself which art is closer to him. There is no need, as in that work, to dissemble and not admit that the king is naked, and blindly, using a tribute to fashion, applaud Chagall. But this is the kind of thing - art and was created to lift a person. Therefore, you can at least try to ascend.
What is the significance of Chagall? In his irrepressible thirst for art. He became the only artist in the world, and this should flatter his fellow countrymen, whose stained-glass windows adorn religious buildings of several confessions at once: synagogues, Lutheran churches, Catholic churches - only 15 buildings in the USA, Europe and Israel. Is this not worldwide recognition? But not only this is his merit. In 1919, in Vitebsk, Chagall opened an art school, where even Moscow painters later came. Then the art museum. By the way, even Malevich used his base in his work with students. Chagall was also responsible for the decoration of the city: according to his sketches, decorations were made for many holidays. These three directions, notes Gennady Petrovich, became the brightest in the life of Chagall during the Vitebsk period.
VITEBSK and Liozno were seen in Berlin, Paris, Moscow. In Chagall's paintings. Isn't this the significance of the artist? I defined Chagall's uniqueness for myself - he managed to present and show the beauty of his native land to foreigners. A simple artist from Vitebsk, small by world standards.
Or is it Liozno? ..
TO THIS TOPIC
The National Art Museum has opened the exhibition "Marc Chagall: The Color of Love", which will run until September 12. The lithographs shown on it were executed in the 1950-1960s as illustrations for various publications, but for publications dedicated to Chagall himself. Hence the entire rich range of subject themes that distinguish Chagall's work: landscapes of Vitebsk, Paris, Saint-Paul-de-Vence, couples in love and mother and child, fantastic creatures and symbolic animals, musicians and, of course, the image of the master himself. The exhibition features eleven color and one black-and-white ("Village") lithographs from among those included in the monograph "Chagall" by the famous French art critic and art historian Jacques Lassen, with whom the artist had a long-term friendship.
REFERENCE "SG"
The celebrations of the artist's jubilee began in January. First, an exhibition opened dedicated to the German artist Hermann Struck, from whom Chagall studied the art of engraving in 1922. Then the presentation of the IV Shagalov collection took place. On the eve of the May holidays, an exhibition “130 years - 130 masterpieces. Retrospective of Marc Chagall's work from the museum collection. " Recently, Vitebsk Pokrovskaya Street, on which the Chagall House-Museum is located, has also been transformed. On the fences and facades, poetic and prosaic quotes from the artist appeared, which, on the one hand, serve as an art object, and on the other, make you look at Vitebsk in a new way in an attempt to understand the origins of the artist's incredible love and longing for his small homeland.
One of the most famous representatives of avant-garde art in painting, graphic artist, illustrator, set designer, poet, master of applied and monumental art of the twentieth century, Marc Chagall, was born in the city of Vitebsk on June 24, 1887. In the family of a small merchant Zakhar (Khatskel), he was the eldest of ten children. From 1900 to 1905, Mark studied at the First City Four-Year School. The Vitebsk artist Yu. M. Pen led the first steps of the future painter M. Chagall. Then a whole cascade of events took place in Mark's life, and all of them were associated with his move to St. Petersburg.
From 1907 to 1908, Chagall studied at the school for the Public Encouragement of Arts, at the same time, throughout 1908, he also attended classes at the school of E.N. Zvyagintseva. The first painting written by Chagall was the painting "The Dead" ("Death") (1908), which is now kept in Paris at the National Museum of Modern Art. This is followed by "Family" or "Holy Family", "Portrait of my bride in black gloves" (1909). These canvases were painted in the style of neo-primitivism. In the fall of the same 1909, Marc Chagall's Vitebsk friend, Thea Brakhman, who also studied in St. Petersburg and was such a modern girl that she even posed nude for Chagall several times, introduced the artist to her friend Bella Rosenfeld. According to Chagall himself, barely glancing at Bella, he immediately realized that this was his wife. It is her black eyes that look at us from all of Chagall's paintings of that period; she, her marvelous features, are guessed in all the women portrayed by the artist. 1st Parisian period.
Paris
In 1911, Marc Chagall received a scholarship and went to Paris to continue his studies there and get to know French artists and avant-garde poets. Chagall fell in love with Paris immediately. If, even before his departure to France, Chagall's manner of painting somehow echoed the painting of Van Gogh, that is, it was very close to expressionism, then in Paris the influence of Fauvism, Futurism and Cubism is already felt in the work of the painter. Among the acquaintances of Chagall are the famous masters of painting and words A. Modigliani, G. Apollinaire, M. Jacob.
Return
Only in 1914 did the artist leave Paris to travel to Vitebsk in order to see Bella and his family. There he was found by the First World War, so the artist had to postpone his return to Europe until better times. In 1915, Marc Chagall and Bella Rosenfeld got married, and a year later, in 1916, they had a daughter, Ida, who would become the biographer of her famous father in the future. After the October Revolution, Marc Chagall was appointed Commissioner for the Arts in the Vitebsk province. In 1920, on the recommendation of A. M. Efros, Chagall went to Moscow to work at the Jewish Chamber Theater. A year later, in 1921, he worked as a teacher in the suburbs of Moscow, in the Jewish labor school-colony for street children "Third International".
Emigration
In 1922, in Lithuania, in the city of Kaunas, an exhibition of Marc Chagall was organized, which the artist did not fail to take advantage of. Together with his family, he left for Latvia, and from there - to Germany. And in the fall of 1923, Ambroise Vollard sent Chagall an invitation to come to Paris, where in 1937 he received French citizenship. Then comes the Second World War. Chagall could no longer remain in Nazi-occupied France, so he accepts the invitation from the management of the Museum of Modern Art in New York to move to America in 1941. With what joy the artist received the news of the liberation of Paris in 1944! But his joy was short-lived. The artist suffered a deafening grief - his wife Bella died of sepsis in a New York hospital. Only nine months after the funeral, Mark ventured to take up a brush again in order to paint two paintings in memory of his beloved: "Next to her" and "Wedding Lights".
When Chagall turned 58, he ventured into a new relationship with a certain Virginia McNeill - Haggard, who was over thirty. They had a son, David McNeill. In 1947, Mark finally returned to Paris. Virginia, three years later, left Chagall, running away from him with a new lover. She took her son with her. In 1952, Chagall married again. The owner of the London fashion salon Valentina Brodetskaya became his wife. But for the rest of his life, his first wife Bella remained the only muse of Chagall.
In the sixties, Marc Chagall suddenly turned to monumental art: he was engaged in stained glass windows, mosaics, ceramics and sculpture. By order of Charles de Gaulle, Marc painted the ceiling of the Parisian Grand Opera (1964), and in 1966 he created 2 panels for the Metropolitan Opera in New York. His 1972 mosaic "The Four Seasons" adorns the National Bank building in Chicago. It was only in 1973 that Chagall was invited to the USSR, where an exhibition of the artist was organized at the Tretyakov Gallery. Marc Chagall passed away on March 28, 1985. He died at the 98th year of his life in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, where he was buried. Until now, there is no complete catalog of the works of the greatest artist, so huge is his creative heritage.
Mark Zakharovich Chagall is a great expressionist and modernist artist. Born in Vitebsk (Belarus) on July 6, 1887. Painter, graphic artist and illustrator, one of the most famous artists in the world. Despite the fact that most of the paintings are created on biblical and folklore themes, the style of execution still seems very bold and unusual to many.
The Vitebsk painter Yu.M. Peng became the first teacher of Chagall. To improve his skills, Mark went to St. Petersburg, where he entered the school of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts. He was extremely interested in all trends in art, at an early stage, under the impression of which he created his first paintings, which now hang in European museums: "The Dead Man", "Portrait of My Bride in Black Gloves", "Family", etc.
In 1910, Marc Chagall moved to Paris. Here he makes friends with such poets and writers as: G. Apollinaire, B. Sandrard, M. Jacob, A. Salmon. Apollinaire even called his art supernaturalism.
Marc Chagall spent part of his life in France, but at the same time he always called himself a Russian artist. In Paris, to his unique style, he added well-studied - and. All this contributed to its further development. Pictures of this time are distinguished by a tense emotional atmosphere, spirituality and a vivid subtext to the cycle of being - life and death, eternal and momentary.
In 1914, the artist returned to Vitebsk, where he found the beginning of the First World War. Here he lived, worked and painted his immortal paintings until 1941. Then, at the invitation of the New York Museum, he moved with his family to America. In the United States, Marc Chagall worked on theatrical sketches and design for theatrical performances.
In 1948, the artist finally moved to France. Near Nice, he built his own workshop - now it is the National Museum of France, dedicated to the great artist. In Saint-Paul-de-Vence, the artist died on March 28, 1985.
Marc Chagall paintings with titles
Adam and eve
Anyuta. Sister portrait
Birthday
Jew in prayer
Beautiful woman in white collar
Red nude
Flying carriage
Above the city
Bride with a fan
