1975-76
Etching (unsigned)
h39 x w29cm
Edition of 225

Marc Chagall (1887-1985) was born in Vitebsk, Russia, in 1887. From 1907 to 1910 he studied in Saint Petersburg, at the Imperial Society for the Protection of the Arts, and later with Léon Bakst. In 1910, he moved to Paris, where he associated with creatives including Guillaume Apollinaire and Robert Delaunay, and encountered the art of Fauvism and Cubism. He participated in the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon d’Automne in 1912, and had his first solo show at Der Sturm gallery, Berlin, in 1914.

Chagall visited Russia in 1914 but was prevented from returning to Paris by the outbreak of war. He settled in his hometown of Vitebsk, where, after the revolution, he was appointed Commissar for Art in 1918. He founded the Vitebsk Popular Art School and directed it until disagreements with the Suprematists resulted in his resignation in 1920. He moved to Moscow and executed his first stage designs for the State Jewish Chamber Theater there. After a sojourn in Berlin, Chagall returned to Paris in 1923. The following year, he had his first retrospective, at the Galerie Barbazanges-Hodebert, Paris. During the 1930s, he travelled to Palestine, the Netherlands, Spain, Poland, and Italy. In 1933, the Kunsthalle Basel held a major retrospective of his work.

Like many Jewish artists, Chagall fled to the United States during the Second World War and, in 1946, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, gave him a retrospective exhibition. He settled permanently in France in 1948 and exhibited widely in Paris, Amsterdam, and London. In 1951 he visited Israel and executed his first sculptures. The following year the artist travelled in Greece and Italy. During the 1960s Chagall continued to travel widely, often in association with large-scale commissions he received. Among these were windows for the synagogue of the Hadassah University Medical Center, Jerusalem (installed in 1962); a ceiling for the Paris Opéra (installed in 1964); a window for the United Nations building, New York (installed in 1964); murals for the Metropolitan Opera House, New York (installed in 1967); and windows for the cathedral in Metz, France (installed in 1968). An exhibition of the artist’s work from 1967 to 1977 was held at the Musée du Louvre, Paris, in 1977-78, and a major retrospective was held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1985. Chagall died in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France, in 1985.