Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall created masterful works characterized by poetic mystical qualities, bold vivid color, and an expressionist perspective. While his style has been associated with surrealism, fauvism, and cubism, Chagall developed an approach uniquely his own that continues to captivate collectors represented by Park West Gallery today.
Born as Moyshe Segal in Vitebsk, Russia on July 7, 1887, Chagall was the eldest of nine boys in a devout Hassidic Jewish family. His faith and the experience of growing up in a close-knit, impoverished but happy household would profoundly influence his artwork. After studying at the Yehuda Pen School of Painting in 1907, he fled to St. Petersburg following an argument with his father, continuing his education at the Imperial Society for the Protection of the Arts and the Zvantseva School of Drawing and Painting. He moved to Paris in 1910, where his characteristic style began to flourish through exhibitions at the Salon des Indépendants and Salon d’Automne in 1912.
Chagall returned to Vitebsk in 1914 and married Bella Rosenfeld in 1915. Love became a recurring theme in his art, often personified by Bella’s image. After World War I prevented his return to Paris, he served as Commissar for Art and founded the Vitebsk Popular Art School in 1918. The family eventually settled in Paris in 1923, where Chagall worked with renowned publisher Ambroise Vollard on illustrations for literary classics and biblical etchings completed in 1956.
The Nazi occupation forced the Chagalls to flee to the United States in 1941. After Bella’s death in 1944, Chagall sank into depression but eventually found renewed creativity. He returned to France in 1948 and married Valentina Brodsky in 1952. His later career included remarkable stained glass commissions for the Hadassah Hebrew University Medical Center in Jerusalem in 1961, St. Etienne’s Cathedral in Metz in 1962, Notre-Dame de Reims in 1974, and Saint Etienne Church at Mayence in 1981. He also decorated the Paris Opera ceiling in 1964 and created murals for the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City in 1966, along with his celebrated lithographic series “Le Cirque” in 1964.
Chagall died in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France on March 28, 1985 at age 97, leaving behind a prolific legacy admired in collections worldwide.