Who was to be one of the eight children born at the end of the nineteenth century in a small town near Vitebsk in the family of a poor Jew - a herring peddler? Probably a world celebrity. And so it happened. And if someone else has not guessed who it is, you know - this is the famous artist Marc Chagall. A brief biography of his childhood, of course, does not contain any allusions to the stellar future. Nevertheless, the name of this person is quite popular today.
Beginning of the creative path
As a child, Chagall began to study at a Jewish elementary school, and then went to the state, where lessons were already held in Russian. After learning the basics of education at school, before the First World War, from 1907 to 1910, he managed to learn a little painting in St. Petersburg. A noteworthy work of the early period of his work is the painting "Death", which depicts a violinist (a quite often repeated image for the artist we are considering) against the backdrop of nightmarish events on stage.
Then the young Marc Chagall moved to Paris, to a studio on the outskirts of the city of Bohemia, in a famous area called La Rouche. There he met several famous writers and artists, including Guillaume Apollinaire, Robert Delaunay and others. Experiment was encouraged in this company, and Chagall quickly began to develop poetic and innovative trends, influenced by the impressionists and post-impressionists.
Return to home
And from this time, his creative biography has just begun. Marc Chagall fell in love with Paris forever. The artist called him the second Vitebsk. The French capital was the center of world painting, and there Mark unexpectedly gained fame for himself. It was Paris that Mark Zakharovich considered a source of his inspiration. And here he was practically declared one of the founders of such a genre of painting as surrealism. But he is leaving.
After the Berlin exhibition, Mark Zakharovich returns to Vitebsk, where, however, he does not intend to stay too long, only to manage to marry his bride Bella. However, he got stuck in connection with the outbreak of the First World War, as the Russian borders were closed for an indefinite period.
But, instead of falling into despair, Marc Chagall continues to create. Having married Bella in 1915, he creates such masterpieces as "Birthday" and a playful acrobatic painting called "Double Portrait with a Glass of Wine." All the works of this period act as witnesses of the artist’s joyful state during the first years of his married life.
The revolutionary period in the life of the artist
The Jews had every reason to love the revolution. After all, she destroyed the Pale of Settlement and gave the opportunity to many representatives of this nationality to become commissars. And how did Mark Zakharovich feel about the revolution? And what information about this period does his biography contain? Marc Chagall also tried to love the revolution. In his native Vitebsk in 1918, he even became a commissioner for culture, and then founded and led an art school, which is becoming very popular.
Mark Zakharovich, together with his students, decorated the city for the celebration of the first anniversary of the October Revolution. Officials were not so pleased with the design of the celebration as the artist himself. And when representatives of the new government began to ask the master why his cows are green, and the horses fly across the sky, and most importantly - that Shagalov’s characters have in common with great revolutionary principles and Karl Marx, the fascination with revolution quickly disappeared. Moreover, the Bolsheviks set a new line of settledness, and not only for Jews.
Moving to the capital and the decision to leave Russia
What did Chagall Mark Zakharovich do? His biography is still connected with Russia, and now he moves to Moscow, where he begins to teach the drawing of revolution orphans in a children's colony. These were children who had been subjected to abusive treatment by criminals more than once, many remembered the brilliance of the steel blade of a knife, which had been stabbed by their parents, stunned by the whistling of bullets and the ringing of broken glasses.
Once, passing by the Kremlin, Mark Zakharovich saw Trotsky getting out of the car. With a heavy step, he headed to his apartment. Then the artist realized how tired he was, and acutely felt that he wanted to paint his paintings more than anything else. Neither tsarist nor Soviet power, in his opinion, was needed.
Marc Chagall decides to pick up his wife and daughter, who has already appeared by then, and leave Russia. He becomes the first commissar who leaves the new state in order not only to save the lives of loved ones, but also his soul from unfreedom.
New life, or Attitude to the artist’s work abroad
Marc Chagall, whose biography and work is now no longer associated with his homeland, went to France - towards his immortality. In subsequent years, the phrase “genius of the century”, “patriarch of world painting” was added to his name. The French declared Mark Zakharovich the head of the Paris art school. And at the same time in Germany in a huge bonfire burned the paintings of Chagall. Why did some consider his painting the pinnacle of modern art, while others prevented the realization of their "cannibalistic" designs.
Probably, he was struck by a sense of personal independence. He was free as God in the process of creating the universe. Wherever Chagall lived - in Vitebsk, New York or Paris - he always portrayed almost the same thing. One or two human figures soaring into the air ... A cow, a rooster, a horse or a donkey, several musical instruments, flowers, roofs of houses of his native Vitebsk. Almost nothing else was written by Marc Chagall. The description of the paintings shows not only repeating images, but also practically no different plot lines from each other.
Waking dream, or What are the paintings of Mark Zakharovich
Nevertheless, connoisseurs and connoisseurs were amazed. Mark Zakharovich showed ordinary objects as if the viewer sees them for the first time. He very naturally depicted fantastic things. For simple, not sophisticated art lovers, paintings by Mark Zakharovich are ordinary childhood dreams. In them - an irresistible desire to fly. Waking dreams about something unspeakably beautiful, joyful and sad at the same time. Marc Chagall is an artist who conveyed in his works what every person feels at least once in his life. This is unity with the great universe.
This man is known all over the world.
This rare moment of enlightenment lasted eighty years with Mark Zakharovich. That is how much fate let go of the great artist for creativity. He painted hundreds of paintings. His painting is in New York at the Metropolitan Opera and at the Grand Opera in Paris. His works include dozens of stained glass windows in European cathedrals and in buildings around the world, where many people live who know who Marc Chagall is. His biography and paintings are popular today not only in Russia. Even at the United Nations there are elements of the painting of this talented artist.
Creative biography. Marc Chagall and world fame
When Hitler came to power, the paintings of the artist Marc Chagall began to express the anxiety of the artist about the future fate of humanity. This is “Loneliness”, “White Crucifix”, where Jewish and Christian symbols are mixed with the Nazi mob terrorizing Jews. Mark Zakharovich is evacuated to the United States and continues his work there.
It is worth noting another period in the work of the artist, which describes his biography. Marc Chagall in 1944 lost his wife, and, of course, this was reflected in his works. Bella appears on such canvases of the artist as "Wedding Candles", "Nocturne" and others: in several forms, with ghosts, in the form of an angel or a ghost of a bride.
Return to Paris
In 1948, Mark Zagarovich Chagall again settled in France, on the Cote d'Azur. Here he receives many orders, develops sets and costumes for ballets. In 1960, he began to create stained-glass windows for the synagogue of the Hadassah Medical Center.
Later, he undertakes the creation of large projects in the design of the cathedral in Zurich, the church of St. Stephen in Mainz in Germany and in the church of All Saints in the United Kingdom. The greatest artist Mark Zagarovich Chagall died on March 28, 1985, leaving behind an extensive collection of works in a number of branches of art.
Marc Chagall became one of the symbols of the twentieth century, but not of its dark destructive sides, but of love, the desire for harmony, the hope of finding happiness. Its immortality is in the ability to convey the presence of the Divine spirit in every subject of the world.