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Marc
Chagall was born in Vitebsk, Byelorussia to
a poor Hassidic family. The eldest of nine children,
he studied first in a heder before moving to
a secular Russian school, where he began to
display his artistic talent. With his mother's
support, and despite his father's disapproval,
Chagall pursued his interest in art, going to
St. Petersburg in 1907 to study art with Leon
Bakst. Influenced by contemporary Russian painting,
Chagall's distinctive, child-like style, often
centering on images from his childhood, began
to emerge.
From 1910 to 1914, Chagall lived in Paris, and
there absorbed the works of the leading cubist,
surrealist, and fauvist painters. It was during
this period that Chagall painted some of his
most famous paintings of the Jewish shtetl or
village, and developed the features that became
recognizable trademarks of his art. Strong and
often bright colors portray the world with a
dreamlike, non-realistic simplicity, and the
fusion of fantasy, religion, and nostalgia infuses
his work with a joyous quality. Animals, workmen,
lovers, and musicians populate his figures;
the "fiddler on the roof" recurs frequently,
often hovering within another scene.
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