Marc Chagall

Born in Vitebsk, in the Russian Empire, Chagall studied in St. Petersburg with stage designer Léon Bakst. In 1911, he moved to Paris, where he encountered the avant-garde and developed a distinctive style influenced by Post-Impressionism, Fauvism and Cubism. He exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon d’Automne, and held a solo exhibition at the Der Sturm gallery in Berlin in 1914. Returning to Vitebsk during the First World War, he supported the Russian Revolution and was appointed regional commissar for the arts. He later moved to Moscow, where he worked for the Yiddish Theatre. After leaving Russia in 1922, he passed through Berlin and settled in Paris in 1923. There, he illustrated Gogol’s Dead Souls and La Fontaine’s Fables on commission from Ambroise Vollard, for whom he also produced biblical illustrations. Fleeing Nazism, he settled in New York in 1941. He returned to France in 1948 and continued painting and printmaking, while also working on stained-glass windows and theatre design. He created decorations for the Paris Opéra and murals for the Metropolitan Opera in New York. He died in 1985.