World celebrates 130th birth anniversary of Marc Chagall

7 июля 2017

By Olga Medved: Today marks the 130th birth anniversary of Marc Chagall. Born in Vitebsk, the avant-garde artist, painter, graphic artist and theatrical designer is well-known around the world due to his unique style.

The artist’s first teacher was Yehuda Pen, the author of the only lifetime portrait of a young Chagall. The next step was St. Petersburg with master classes by Nicholas Roerich, Saveliy Zeydenberg, Leon Bakst and Mstislav Dobuzhinsky. In Paris, Chagall worked at La Ruche, an art center and a residence for foreign artists. He had to create his Paris period works twice, because the paintings left at La Ruche had been lost. Chagall partially recreated them from memory, drawings and reproductions. Among the recovered works are Birthday, I and the Village, Over Vitebsk and others.

Chagall worked not only in visual arts, but also in literature, writing poems in Yiddish, which, incidentally, will be decorating the facades in the artist’s home street in Vitebsk this year.

In the 1920s, Chagall took interest in graphic techniques and in the 60s Chagall painted the ceiling in Paris's Opera Garnier, created two murals for New York’s Metropolitan Opera and designed the mosaic Four Seasons for the First National Bank of Chicago.