Marc Chagall: A Storyteller
Friday, November 19, 2021 at 9:00AM 
Marc Chagall, Rain (La Pluie), 1911. Oil and charcoal on canvas, 86.7 x 108 cm, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (click photo for larger image)Marc Chagall (1887-1985) was a Russian-French early modernist artist. He was associated with several major artistic styles and created works in a wide range of artistic formats, including painting, drawings, book illustrations, stained glass, stage sets, ceramics, tapestries and fine art prints.
Chagall’s poetic, figurative style made him one of most popular modern artists, while his long life and varied output made him one of the most internationally recognized. While many of his peers pursued ambitious experiments that led often to abstraction, Chagall's distinction lies in his steady faith in the power of figurative art.
Chagall's Jewish identity was important to him throughout his life, and much of his work can be described as an attempt to reconcile old Jewish traditions with styles of modernist art. However, he also occasionally drew on Christian themes, which appealed to his taste for narrative and allegory.
Although he borrowed from the Surrealists, he ultimately rejected their more conceptual subject matter. Nevertheless, a dream-like quality is characteristic of almost all of Chagall's work. The poet and critic Guillaume Apollinaire described Chagall's work as “supernatural”.
Marc Chagall's influence is as vast as the number of styles he assimilated to create his work. Although never completely aligning himself with any single movement, he interwove many of the visual elements of Cubism, Fauvism, Symbolism and Surrealism into his lyrically emotional aesthetic of Jewish folklore, dream-like pastorals, and Russian life.
Read more about Chagall here on What About Art?
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