Marc Chagall

Born in Vitesbk in the Russian Empire, Chagall moved to St. Petersburg and studied for three years and trained by stage designer Bakst. In 1910 he moved to Paris in the avant-garde quarter La Ruche. He absorbed the spirit of Post-Impressionism and Fauvism and interpreted them in his own style, producing some of the most iconic paintings. He exhibited at the Salon des Indepéndants, Salon d’Automne and in the Berlin gallery of Der Sturm. Back in Vitesbk at the onset of WWI, he welcomed the Russian Revolution and became commissar for art in the region. He moved to Moscow, working for theatre set and costumes. He left Russia and moved to Berlin first and settled in Paris, where Vollard commissioned him to illustrate Gogol’s Dead Souls and Jean de La Fontaine’s Poems. With the rise of Nazism, Chagall travelled in France before settling in New York to US in 1941. He returned to Paris a third time in 1948 and continued to work on painting, etching and strained glass projects, and in theatre design for New York Metropolitan Opera and Paris Opéra. He died in 1985.