Marc Chagall

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Marc Zakharovich Chagall (born Moishe Zakharovich Shagal; 6 July [O.S.]

[Japan] 1887-1887 – 28 March 1985) was a Russian-French artist of Belarusian Jewish origins.

He was an early modernist and produced works in a variety of artistic styles, including painting, drawing, book illustrations, stained glass, stage sets, and fine art prints. Chagall was described by art critic Robert Hughes as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century" (though Chagall understood his work as "not the dream of one person but of all humanity").

Chagall was considered to be "the last survivor of the first generation of European modernists" by art historian Michael J. Lewis.

"He had also been admired as the world's top Jewish artist for decades."

He made windows for the cathedrals of Reims and Metz, windows for the UN and the Art Institute of Chicago, and Israel's Jerusalem Windows.

He also made large-scale paintings, including part of the Paris Opéra's ceiling. He travelled between Saint Petersburg, Paris, and Berlin before World War I.

He created his own mixture and style of modern art based on his interpretation of Eastern European Jewish folk culture during this period.

He spent the wartime years in Soviet Belarus, becoming one of the country's most influential artists and a member of the modernist avant-garde, founded the Vitebsk Arts College before heading to Paris in 1922. Lewis argues that he had two specific reputations: as a pioneer of modernism and as a major Jewish artist.

"He lived in Paris, where "he synthesized the art forms of Cubism, Symbolism, and Fauvism," Fauvism's influence gave rise to Surrealism."

And yet, "he remained the most distinctly a Jewish artist" during these years, whose work was a long-awaited revival of life in Vitebsk's native village." "Chagall will be the only painter left who knows what color really is" when Matisse dies," Pablo Picasso predicted in the 1950s.

Early life and education

Marc Chagall was born Moishe Shagal, a Jewish family in Liozna, near the city of Vitebsk (Belarus, then part of the Russian Empire), in 1887. Vitebsk's population was about 66,000 at the time of his birth. The majority of the population was Jewish. After the cosmopolitan city of the former Spanish Empire, a picturesque city of churches and synagogues was named "Russian Toledo" by artist Ilya Repin. As the city was mainly wood built, little of it survived years of occupation and fire during World War II.

Chagall was the eldest of nine children. Shagal is a variation of the word Segal, which in a Jewish family was traditionally borne by a Levitic family. Khatskl (Zachar) Shagal's father, as well as his mother, Feige-Ite, sold groceries from their house. His father worked hard, wielding heavy barrels, but only 20 roubles per month were earned (the Russian Empire's average wage was 13 roubles per month). According to Chagall biographer Jacob Baal-Teshuva, Chagall would eventually feature fish motifs "out of respect for his father."

Chagall wrote of these early years:

The manufacture of clothing that was sold throughout the Russian Empire was one of the main sources of income for the town's Jewish population. In addition, they made furniture and other agricultural equipment. The Imperial Russian government confined Jews to live within the Pale of Settlement, which included modern Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia, roughly corresponding to Imperial Russia's territory in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which was largely corresponding to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. According to today's Eastern Europe, Jewish market-villages (shtetls) have flourished, along with their own markets, schools, hospitals, and other community organizations.

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"I felt it every step that I was a Jew," Chagall wrote as a child. "The street lamps are out," Chagall wrote during a pogrom. I'm feeling anxious, especially in front of butchers' windows. There are calves that are still alive among the butcher's hatchets and knives. "Jew or not?" some pogromniks ask. "My pockets are bare, my fingers are fine, my legs are weak, and they are out for blood," Chagall recalls. My death would be futile. I so wanted to live. Chagall denied being a Jew, causing the pogromniks to yell "All right!"

Get along!"

The bulk of what is known about Chagall's early life has come from his autobiography, My Life. He referred in it to the immense influence that Hasidic Judaism's history had on his life as an artist. Chagall related how he learned that the Jewish traditions in which he grew up were rapidly disappearing and that he wanted to record them. Vitebsk's history dates back to the 1730s, with its Kabbalah teachings derived from the Kabbalah. Susan Tumarkin Goodman, a Chagall scholar, discusses the connections and origins of his art to his early home:

Jewish children were not allowed to attend regular schools or universities at the time of the Russian Empire. They were also restricted in moving around the city. Chagall obtained his primary education at the local Jewish religious academy, where he studied Hebrew and the Bible. His mother tried to enroll him in a regular high school but he said, "They don't take Jews in that school." My adamant mother takes the lead as a professor without a moment's trembling. She gave the headmaster 50 roubles to attend, which he accepted.

He first noticed a fellow student's drawing, which was a turning point in his creative life. For the young Chagall, watching someone draw "was like a vision, a revelation in black and white." Chagall would later state that there was no art in his family's house, and that the whole idea was completely foreign to him. When Chagall asked him how to draw, his companion replied, "Go and find a book in the library, fool," says the schoolmate, "choose any picture you like and then copy it." He soon began copying pictures from magazines and found the experience so rewarding, he decided he wanted to be an artist.

"I want to be a painter," he told his mother, although she could not yet know whether he'd be interested in art or why he'd pick a career that was "impractical." "There's a place in town; if I'm accepted and complete the course, I'll come out a regular artist," the young Chagall explained.

I'd be so happy!"

It was 1906, and he had seen Yehuda Pen, a realist artist who owned a drawing school in Vitebsk, while simultaneously providing Pen's students El Lissitzky and Ossip Zadkine. Pen decided to teach Chagall free of charge due to his youth and lack of funds. Chagall, on the other hand, realized that academic portrait painting did not suit his needs after a few months at the academy.Goodman says that Jews had two paths for entering the art world during this period: one was to "hide or deny one's Jewish roots," while the other, which Chagall chose, was to "protect and publicly announce one's Jewish roots" by integrating them into art. This was also a method of "self-assertion and a demonstration of principle for Chagall."

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Franz Meyer, a Chagall biographer, states that "the hassidic spirit is still the foundation and source of nourishment for his art" as a result of his art and early life. Lewis says, "as cosmopolitan an artist as he's coming, his storehouse of visual images would never grow beyond the landscape of his childhood, with its snowy streets, wooden buildings, and ubiquitous fiddlers...

Chagall announced this year, "To My City Vitebsk," as a result of a 57-year-old boy living in the United States, when living in the United States.

Source

Art career

He moved to Saint Petersburg, then the Russian Empire's capital and the country's cultural capital, with its famous art schools. Since Jews were not allowed into the city without a valid passport, he was able to obtain a temporary passport from a friend. He enrolled in a prestigious art academy and spent two years there. He had started painting naturalistic self-portraits and landscapes by 1907. Chagall was a key member of the Grand Orient of Russia's Peoples, an irregular freemasonic lodge. He belonged to the "Vitebsk" lodge.

Chagall was a student at Léon Bakst's Zvantseva School of Drawing and Painting from 1908 to 1910. He discovered experimental theater and the work of such artists as Paul Gauguin while in Saint Petersburg. Bakst, a Jewish artist, was known as a draftsman designer of stage sets and costumes for the Ballets Russes and assisted Chagall in establishing herself as a role model for Jewish triumph. A year later, Bakst returned to Paris. "Chagall" entered the mainstream of contemporary art after living and studying art on his own for four years, according to art historian Raymond Cogniat. ...His apprenticeship over, Russia had a pivotal role in his life.

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Chagall lived in Saint Petersburg until 1910, often visiting Vitebsk, where he first encountered Bella Rosenfeld. Chagall's first meeting her was described as "my silence is mine and her eyes mine." As if she can see right through me, it's as if she knows everything about my childhood, my future, and my future. "If you did get a glimpse of his eyes, they were as blue as if they'd fallen straight out of the sky," Bella later wrote. They were strange eyes, long, almond-shaped, and each seemed to sail along by themselves, like a little boat."

Chagall moved to Paris in 1910 to refine his artistic style. When Chagall first arrived in Paris, Cubism was the most popular art style, and French art was still dominated by the "materialistic outlook of the 19th century." Art historian and curator James Sweeney writes that "in the nineteenth century," Chagall first appeared in Paris. Chagall responds with "a ripe color gift, a new, unashamed response to sentiment, a desire for simple poetry, and a sense of humor," he says. These views were new to Paris at the time, and as a result, his first recognition came not from other painters but from writers such as Blaise Cendrars and Guillaume Apollinaire. Chagall's first interest in art began as "emerging from the internal being outward, from the visible object to the spiritual outpouring," according to art historian Jean Leymarie, which was the opposite of Cubist development.

He also developed friendships with Guillaume Apollinaire and other avant-garde artists, including Robert Delaunay and Fernand Léger. "Chagall's dream of Paris, the city of light and above all, of independence, had come true," Baal-Teshuva writes. 33 "His first days in Chagall, a 23-year-old boy who was homeless and unable to speak French, were a struggle." "I felt like flying back to Russia" some days as he daydreamed while painting, about Slavic folklore's treasures, his Hasidic traditions, his family, and especially Bella."

He enrolled in Paris at Académie de La Palette, an avant-garde art academy where Jean Metzinger, André Dunoyer de Segonzac and Henri Le Fauconnier taught, and later found jobs at another academy. He'd spend his free hours admiring galleries and salons, particularly the Louvre; artists he admire included Rembrandt, the Le Nain brothers, Chardin, Pissarro, Matisse, Gauguin, Millet, Manet, Manet, Monet, Delacroix, and others; He learned gouache, which he used to paint Belarusian scenes in Paris. "I was content just breathing Parisian air" during Montmartre and the Latin Quarter." Baal-Teshuva explains this new stage in Chagall's artistic growth: a tale of Baal-Teshuva.

Chagall was often reminded of his home in Vitebsk, as Paris was also home to many artists, writers, composers, dancers, and other Russian émigrés. However, "night after night he painted until dawn" was only going to bed for a few hours and refused the temptations of the big city at night. 44 "My homeland is only in my mind," he once said. viii He continued painting Jewish motifs and scenes from Vitebsk's childhoods, although he included Parisian scenes, including the Eiffel Tower in particular, as well as portraits. Many of his paintings were reimagined paintings he had made in Russia and turned into Fauvist or Cubist keys.

Chagall produced a complete line of bizarre motifs: ghostly figures floating in the sky, the animals and transparent wombs, and tiny offspring sleeping inside. The majority of his scenes of life in Vitebsk were painted while living in Paris, and Lewis writes, "in a sense they were fantasies." Apollinaire was "struck by their sense of yearning and loss" by a detached and abstract appearance, prompting them to be "surnaturel." Surrealism's "animal/human hybrids and airborne phantoms" would later develop into a defining factor. Chagall, on the other hand, did not want his job to be tied to any institution or movement, and considered his own personal language of symbols to be meaningful to him. However, Sweeney notes that some people still associate his art with "illogical and stunning painting," particularly when he uses "curious representational juxtapositions."

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"This is Chagall's contribution to modern art, from the dawning of a poetic realism, avoiding factual illustration on the one hand, and non-figurative abstractions on the other," Sweeney writes. "The metaphor made its triumphant return to modern painting" with him alone, according to André Breton.

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Since he missed his fiancée, Bella, who was still in Vitebsk, and was afraid of losing her, Chagall decided to refuse a call from a respected art dealer in Berlin, marry Bella, and then return to Paris with her. Chagall's 40 canvases and 160 gouaches, watercolors, and drawings were on display. "The German critics sincerely sang his praises at the exhibition, which was held at Herwarth Walden's Sturm Gallery."

After the show, he continued to Vitebsk, where he had intended to stay just long enough to marry Bella. However, the First World War started a few weeks ago, closing the Russian border for an indefinite period. Bella Rosenfeld and Ida's first child, Ida, arrived a year later. Chagall had a difficult time persuading Bella's parents that he would be a good husband for their daughter before marriage. They were worried about the fact that she would marry a painter from a poor family and wondered how they would help her. It's now aspire and inspiration to be a natural performer. "[T]he euphoric paintings of this period, which depict the young couple floating balloon-like over Vitebsk and its wooden buildings faceted in the Delaunay style, are the most cheerful of his career," Lewis says. His wedding photos were also a topic he'd return to in later years as he considered this period in his life.

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Chagall began exhibiting his work in Moscow in 1915, first showing his work at a well-known salon and then exhibiting photographs in St. Petersburg in 1916. At a Moscow exhibition of avant-garde artists, he displayed his art once more. This exposure brought fame, and a number of wealthy collectors began buying his art. He started illustrating a number of Yiddish books with ink drawings. In 1917, he illustrated I. L. Peretz's The Magician. Chagall was 30 years old and had yet to be well known.

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The 1917 October Revolution in Chagall was a difficult period for the town, but it also provided opportunity. Chagall wrote: "The factories were shutting down" after he came to fear Bolshevik orders tied on fences. The horizons were opened. Space and emptiness are two aspects. There are no more bread on the shelves. The black lettering on the morning posters made me feel sick at heart. Chagall was often hungry for days, later recalling "a bride, the beggars, and the homeless wretches weighed down with bundles," causing him to say that the new Russian Empire had changed the Russian Empire "upside down the way I turn my photographs." He was one of Imperial Russia's most influential artists and a member of the modernist avant-garde, which was renowned for its special privileges and fame as the "aesthetic arm of the revolution." He was given a prominent position as a commissar of visual arts for the country, but instead took a position as commissar of arts for Vitebsk. His founding of Vitebsk Arts College, which, Lewis, became the Soviet Union's most coveted school of art.

Its faculty has recruited some of the country's most influential artists, including El Lissitzky and Kazimir Malevich. Yehuda Pen, Pen's first mentor, was also added to his list. Chagall attempted to create a space for a group of independently minded artists, each with their own distinct style. However, this will soon be prohibitive as a handful of the key faculty members favoured a Suprematist art of squares and circles and condemned Chagall's attempt to invent "bourgeois individualism." Chagall resigned as commissar and moved to Moscow, where he then resigned as commissar.

He was given a job as stage designer for the newly founded State Jewish Chamber Theater in Moscow. It was projected to begin operating in early 1921 with a variety of Sholem Aleichem's plays. He created a number of large background murals for the opening using techniques he learned from Bakst, his early mentor. One of the main murals was 9 feet (2.7 meters) long by 24 feet (7.3 m), and featured images of dancers, fiddlers, acrobats, and farm animals. "Hebrew jazz in paint," one critic put it at the time. Chagall was founded as a "storehouse of symbols and devices," Lewis describes. The murals "formed a landmark" in the theater's history, and they were forerunners of his later large-scale works, including murals for the New York Metropolitan Opera and the Paris Opera.

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The First World War ended in 1918, but the Russian Civil War raged, and famine spread. The Chagalls found it necessary to move to a smaller, less costly, town near Moscow, but Chagall had to commute to Moscow every day by packed trains. In 1921, he and his friend sculptor Isaac Itkind were in a Jewish boys' shelter in suburban Malakhovka, which housed young refugees who were orphaned by pogroms. 270 He created a series of illustrations for the Yiddish poetry cycle Grief, written by David Hofstein, another instructor at the Malakhovka shelter.

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He returned to France in order to continue his art in a more affluent world after living in primitive conditions between 1921 and 1922. Several other writers, writers, and musicians were planning to relocate to the West. He applied for an exit visa and wrote My Life, a memoir about his life.

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Chagall left Moscow in 1923 to return to France. On his way back to Berlin to recover the many photos he had left on display ten years earlier, but he was unable to locate or recover any of them. Nonetheless, after returning to Paris, he "rediscovered the free expansion and fulfillment that had been sorely missing to him," Lewis says. With all his early works now lost, he began to paint from his memories of his Vitebsk childhood, as illustrated and oil paintings.

He began a business relationship with French art dealer Ambroise Vollard. This inspired him to start etchings for a number of illustrated books, including Gogol's Death Souls, the Bible, and La Fontaine's Fables. These illustrations would eventually be used to represent his finest printmaking attempts. He travelled to Brittany in 1924 and drew La fenêtre sur l'Île-de-Bréhat. He had his first exhibition in the United States at the Reinhardt gallery in New York, which featured about 100 works, but he did not make it to the opening. According to Baal-Teshuva, he stayed in France instead, "painting ceaselessly." When art critic and historian Maurice Raynal awarded Chagall a place in his book Modern French Painters in 1927, it wasn't until 1927 that he made his name in French art history. However, Raynal was also struggling to accurately describe Chagall to his readers:

He travelled through France and Côte d'Azur, enjoying the landscapes, vibrant trees, the blue Mediterranean Sea, and the mild weather. He went back to the countryside on several trips, often carrying his sketchbook. 9 He also visited nearby countries and later wrote about the impressions left on him by those travelers:

Vollard commissioned Chagall to illustrate the Old Testament after returning to Paris from one of his trips. Although he could have completed the work in France, he used the assignment as an excuse to fly to Israel to see for himself the Holy Land. Marc Chagall and his family travelled to Tel Aviv on Meir Dizengoff's invitation in 1931. Dizengoff had previously encouraged Chagall to visit Tel Aviv in connection with Dizengoff's proposal to create a Jewish Art Museum in the new city. Chagall and his family were encouraged to remain at Dizengoff's house in Tel Aviv, which later became the State of Israel's Independence Hall.

Chagall stayed in the Holy Land for two months. Chagall felt at home in Israel, where many people spoke Yiddish and Russian. "He was amazed by the pioneering spirit of the people in the kibbutzim and deeply moved by the Wailing Wall and other holy places," Jacob Baal-Teshuva says.

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Chagall told a friend that Israel gave him "the most vivid image he had ever received." Wullschlager notes, however, that although Delacroix and Matisse were inspired by North Africa's exoticism, he as a Jew in Israel had a different viewpoint. "What he was really looking for was not external motivation, but an inside permission from his ancestors' land." "I found the Bible and a piece of my own being in the East," Chagall said.

As a result, Wullschlager wrote that he immersed himself in "the Jews' past, their trials, prophecies, and tragedies." Beginning the assignment was a "extraordinary risk" for Chagall, according to Sherd, who had recently been established as a leading contemporary painter, but she would now shift his attention away from modernist themes and into "an ancient past." 350 Between 1931 and 1934, he worked "obsessively" on "The Bible, even going to Amsterdam in order to carefully study Rembrandt and El Greco's biblical paintings in order to see the extremes of religious painting. He walked around the streets of the city's Jewish quarter to get a sense of the earlier atmosphere.

He told Franz Meyer:

According to Wullschlager, Chagall saw the Old Testament as a "human story" rather than with the cosmos's creation, but not with man's figure of angels, which are rhymed or mixed with human ones. The angels sip and discuss a glass of wine "as if they had just dropped by for dinner," she says in one of his early Bible images, "Abraham and the Three Angels."

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He returned to France and finished 32 out of a total of 105 plates by the next year. He had finished 66. He had been 1939, at the start of World War II. Vollard died in the same year as well. Edition Tériade was the first time the series was published in 1956. "The illustrations were stunning and received brisk praise," Baal-Teshuva says. Chagall had already established himself as one of the twentieth century's greatest graphic artists. 135 Leymarie's drawings by Chagall have been described as "monumental" and, according to him, "monumental."

Adolf Hitler assumed office in Germany not long after Chagall began his Bible studies. Anti-Semitic legislation was being enforced, and the first concentration camp at Dachau had been established. Wullschlager discusses the early influences on art:

A committee headed by Joseph Goebbels began confiscating twenty thousand works from German museums beginning in 1937 as "degenerate." 375 Although the German press had once "swooned over him," the new German authorities have made a mockery of Chagall's art by boasting that they were "emerging on violins and flying through the air, implying [an] attack on Western civilization."

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The Chagalls remained in Vichy France after Germany invaded and occupied France, unaware that French Jews, with the Vichy government's assistance, were being collected and sent to German concentration camps from which few would recover. The Vichy cooperative government, led by Marshal Philippe Pétain, immediately after taking power, established a commission to "redefine French citizenship" with the intention of removing "unwanted" people from their French nationality, including naturalized citizens. Chagall had been so involved with his art that it wasn't until the Vichy government, the Vichy government's at the time of Nazi occupation, began authorizing anti-Semitic legislation in October 1940 that he began to understand what was happening. The Chagalls finally "woke up to the danger they faced" after learning that Jews were being barred from public and academic positions. But Wullschlager argues that "by then they were trapped." 382 Their only refuge could be America, but "they couldn't afford the ticket to New York" or the huge bond that each immigrant had to have on arrival to ensure that they did not become a financial burden to the country.

"[T]he speed with which France collapsed stunned everybody: the [British-supported French army] capitulated even faster than Poland had done" a year ago, according to Wullschlager. Shock waves swept the Atlantic, as Paris had not been equated with development in the non-Nazi world until then. 388 However, the Chagalls' attachment to France "blinded them to the situation's urgency." "389" Many well-known Russian and Jewish artists eventually escaped: such as Cham Soutine, Max Beckmann, Ludwig Fulda, author Victor Serge, and prize-winning author Vladimir Nabokov, who was married to a Jewish woman though not Jewish himself, were among those who attempted to flee. Victor Serge, an 1181 Russian author, described many of the people who were temporarily in Marseille who were trying to immigrate to America: Many of the people were waiting to immigrate to America.

After daughter Ida's prodding, who "experienced the urgency of doing so quickly," Chagall was saved by his name being included on the list of influential artists whose lives were in jeopardy and who the US should strive to extricate, thanks to her son's dedication. Varian Fry, the American writer, and Hiram Bingham IV, the American Vice-Consul in Marseilles, arranged a rescue mission to smuggle artists and intellectuals out of Europe to the United States by supplying them with forged visas. Chagall and his wife were refused French citizenship in April 1941. The Chagalls remained in a Marseille hotel where they were arrested together with other Jews. Varian Fry was able to convince the French police to free him, despite the fact that they had been warned of the scandal. Chagall was one of over 2,000 people rescued by this operation. Lewis describes his escape from France in May 1941, "when it was almost too late." Picasso and Matisse were also invited to visit America, but they decided not to come from France. On June 23, 1941, Chagall and Bella arrived in New York, the day after Germany invaded the Soviet Union. 150 Ida and her husband Michel continued their journey on the SS Navemar, a large example of Chagall's work. On his return to the United States, Ida and intelligence analyst Konrad Kellen shared a chance post-war meeting in a French café, resulting in Kellen's carrying more paintings.

Chagall received the Carnegie Prize third prize in 1939 for "Les Fiancés" well before arriving in the United States in 1941. While living in America, he found that he had already achieved "international recognition," writes Cogniat, although he felt unsuited for this new position in a foreign country whose language he could not yet speak. He became a celebrity who was mostly against his will, becoming lost in the strange surroundings.

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He began to settle in New York, which was brimming with writers, painters, and composers who had fled from Europe during the Nazi invasions. He lived at 4 East 74th Street. He spent time in galleries and museums, as well as befriended other artists, including Piet Mondrian and André Breton.

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Chagall "loved" going to the Lower East Side of New York, particularly the Lower East Side, according to Baal-Teshuva. He felt at home, enjoying the Jewish dishes and being able to read the Yiddish newspaper, his main source of information because he did not yet speak English.

Contemporary artists did not know or even like Chagall's art. "They had little in common with a folkloristic storyteller of Jewish descent with a penchant for mistrust," Baal-Teshuva said. The Paris School, which was referred to as 'Parisian Surrealism,' did not refer to them. 155 But those attitudes would begin to change when Pierre Matisse, the son of renowned French artist Henri Matisse, became his ambassador and supervised Chagall exhibitions in New York and Chicago in 1941. 21 of his masterpieces from 1910 to 1941 were on display in one of the oldest exhibitions. Henry McBride, an art critic, wrote about this exhibition for the New York Sun.

Léonide Massine, a choreographer, of the Ballet Theatre of New York, had a commission to make the costumes and costumes for his new ballet, Aleko. With the music of Tchaikovsky, this ballet will bring Alexander Pushkin's verse story to life. The ballet was originally scheduled for a New York debut, but as a cost-cutting measure, it was relocated to Mexico, where labor costs were lower than in New York. Although Chagall had performed stage settings before in Russia, this was his first ballet, and it would give him the opportunity to visit Mexico. Although he quickly learned the Mexicans' "primitive ways and vibrant art," Cogniat says. While there, he discovered "something very similar to his own nature" and did all of the sets' color information. He created four large backdrops and had Mexican seamstresses sew the ballet costumes.

On September 8, 1942, the ballet premiered at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, and it was described as a "remarkable success." Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco were among the audience members who attended Chagall's exhibition, including Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco. "There was a tumultuous applause and 19 curtain calls at the final bar of music," Chagall himself was called back to the stage once more and again," according to Baal-Teshuva. The performance then travelled to New York, where it was premiered at the Metropolitan Opera four weeks later, "again Chagall was the hero of the evening." 158 On the opening for the New York Herald Tribune, art critic Edwin Denby said of Chagall's work: "Chris is a painter."

After Chagall's return to New York in 1943, current events began to fascinate him more, and his art, where he painted subjects including the Crucifixion and scenes of war. He learned that the Germans had destroyed Vitebsk, the town where he was born, and was deeply distraught. 159 He also heard about the Nazi concentration camps. During a speech in February 1944, he expressed some of his feelings:

In a speech, he praised Soviet Russia for doing the most to save the Jews: he said in the same address that he praised the Jews:

Bella died overnight from a virus infection that was not addressed due to the wartime shortage of medications. As a result, he stopped all painting for several months, and when he did resume painting, he was concerned with preserving Bella's memory. Bella took her place in Chagall's thoughts as news poured in through 1945 of the continuing Holocaust at Nazi concentration camps, according to Wullschlager: "Because of the millions of Jewish refugees." He even considered the possibility that their "exile from Europe" had sapped her will to live.

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After a year of living with his daughter Ida and her husband Michel Gordey, he embarked on a seven-year friendship with Virginia Haggard, the daughter of writer Sir Godfrey Digby Napier Haggard and the great-niece of author Sir Henry Rider Haggard. They had a child together, David McNeil, who was born on June 22, 1946. In her book My Life with Chagall, Haggard recalled her "seven years of wealth" with Chagall (Robert Hale, 1986).

Chagall wrote a letter to the Paris artists just a few months after the Allies succeeded in liberating Paris from Nazi rule with the help of the Allies.

His art had already become well-known by 1946. The Museum of Modern Art in New York held a big exhibition exhibiting 40 years of his work, giving visitors one of the first comprehensive glimpses of how his art has shifted over the years. The war had ended, and he began planning to return to Paris. "He was even more attached to the city itself," Cogniat reports. Chagall summed up his time in America: During his time in America, he recalled his time in America.

He did well during the autumn of 1947, where he attended the opening of the exhibition of his works at the Musée National d'Art Moderne.

Since returning to France, he travelled through Europe and decided to live in the Côte d'Azur, which by that time had become somewhat of a "artistic center." Matisse lived near Saint-Paul-de-Vence, about seven miles west of Nice, while Picasso lived in Vallauris. Even if they lived close and occasionally worked together, there was an artistic rivalry between them because their jobs were so different, and they never became long-term friends. Picasso's mistress, Françoise Gilot, had a great deal of admiration for Chagall and even told her, she had a great deal of respect for Chagall.

Virginia Haggard left Chagall for photographer Charles Leirens in April 1952, and she went on to become a professional photographer for herself.

Ida Brodsky, a woman from Chagall's past, married art historian Franz Meyer in January 1952, realizing that her father's absence of a woman in his family's house, introduced him to Valentina (Vava) Brodsky, a woman from a similar family who had operated a successful millinery operation in London. She became Chagall's secretary after a few months, but only if Chagall marries her. The marriage took place in July 1952: 183, though six years later, when there was a clash between Ida and Vava, "Marc and Vava divorced and remarried under a new deal more favorable to Vava" (Jean-Paul Crespelle, author of Chagall).

He was hired as set decorator for Robert Helpmann's production of Le Coq d'Or at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in 1954, but he withdrew. Loudon Sainthill, an Australian designer, was only introduced in his position on short notice.

In the years ahead, he was able to produce not only paintings and graphic art, but also a number of sculptures and ceramics, such as wall tiles, painted vases, plates, and jugs. He also began experimenting in larger-scale sizes, including large murals, stained glass windows, mosaics, and tapestries.

Chagall was hired to paint the new ceiling for the Paris Opera (Palais Garnier), a magnificent 19th-century building and national monument in 1963. André Malraux, France's Culture Minister, wanted something unique and decided Chagall would be the ideal artist. However, this artist's choice of a Belarusian Jew to decorate a French national monument was causing controversy: some objected to the ceiling of the historic building being painted by a modern artist, while others disliked it. Some journals published condescending articles about Chagall and Malraux, among which Chagall wrote to one writer: Chagall wrote to one writer.

Despite this, Chagall finished the project, which took the 77-year-old artist a year to complete. The final canvas was nearly 2,400 square feet (220 sq. ft.). meters) and required 440 pounds (200 kg) of paint. It had five sections that were glued to polyester panels and hoisted up to the 70-foot (21 m) ceiling. The paintings on the canvas paid tribute to composers Mozart, Wagner, Mussorgsky, Berlioz, Ravel, and Ravel, as well as famous actors and dancers.

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On September 23, 1964, it was presented to the world in the presence of Malraux and 2,100 invited guests. "Fortunately the best seats were in the uppermost circle," the New York Times' Paris reporter wrote: "Forteignly the best seats were in the topmost circle."

"Even the most ardent opponents of the commission seemed to be silent when it was announced," writes Baal-Teshuva. "Chris Maligno's latest work has been lauded by the French culture as a major contribution to French history." "What other living artist may have painted the ceiling of the Paris Opera in the way Chagall did?" Malraux later said. He is above all one of the best poets of our time, with exquisite paintings on his canvases and the Opera ceiling illustrating sublime scenes that place among the highest poetry of our time, as Titian produced the best poetry of his day. "199 In Chagall's address to the audience, he explained the work's meaning: "In Chagall's address: "The work is about to be understood."

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