Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall was born on 7 July 1887 in Vitebsk, in the Russian Empire — the city now part of Belarus — and died on 28 March 1985 in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France. He trained first in Vitebsk and then in Saint Petersburg before making his way to Paris, where he forged a visual language entirely his own: a synthesis of Fauvism, Cubism, Symbolism, and Surrealism, filtered through the folklore, memory, and spiritual life of his Belorussian-Jewish origins. Over the course of the twentieth century he worked across painting, printmaking, lithography, etching, and design, establishing himself as one of the most versatile artists of the modern era.

Chagall's early Paris years produced some of his most celebrated canvases. I and the Village, painted in 1911 and now held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, announced his personal fusion of folk memory and modernist form. The following year, Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers — today in the collection of the Centre Pompidou in Paris — declared his artistic ambitions with characteristic wit and cosmopolitan energy. Paris Through the Window (1913), in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, crystallised his gift for dreamlike urban vision, while The Birthday (1915), also at MoMA, gave enduring form to one of his most beloved motifs: figures lifted airborne by love. The reworked Green Violinist (1923–1924), now at the Centre Pompidou, stands as a landmark of his mature French period, and The White Crucifixion (1938), held at the Art Institute of Chicago, brought his imagery into direct confrontation with the political catastrophes of his time — widely regarded as one of the most powerful anti-fascist paintings of the twentieth century.

Chagall's ambitions extended well beyond the easel. The Triumph of Music (1966), a ceiling painting for the Paris Opéra, exemplified his command of monumental decorative commissions, and America Windows (1977), a stained-glass cycle at the Art Institute of Chicago, demonstrated his sustained mastery of public art into the final decades of his life. His work entered the permanent collections of major institutions including the Musée national Marc Chagall in Nice, the Musée national d'art moderne at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and the MAR in Ravenna. The Musée national Marc Chagall in Nice is presenting a solo exhibition in 2026, and the MAR in Ravenna hosted a solo exhibition devoted to his mosaic work in 2025. On the secondary market, specialist galleries including Chagall Galerie Wuyt in Amsterdam, Galerie AB in Paris, and Gilden's Art Gallery in London maintain active focus on his work, alongside the historic association of Galerie Maeght in Paris. Smithsonian Magazine devoted a substantial critical essay to his life, style, and reception in 2021, reflecting the enduring international attention his legacy continues to command.