Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall, whose Hebrew name was Moishe Segal and whose Russian name was Mark Zacharovic Šagal, was born on July 7, 1887, in Lëzna, near Vitebsk, in Belarus, then part of the Russian Empire. Coming from a Hasidic Jewish family of humble origins, Chagall grew up in an environment rich in religious tradition and Yiddish culture. In 1900 he began working as a retoucher before fully dedicating himself to painting, studying at Yehuda Pen's workshop school in Vitebsk and subsequently attending the Russian Academy of Fine Arts in Saint Petersburg, where he encountered important artists and discovered Western art by Cézanne and Matisse.

In 1910 Chagall moved to Paris, where he remained until 1914, entering the artistic environment of Montparnasse and becoming a representative exponent of the École de Paris. His works from this period were characterized by memories of Russian rural life and Jewish tradition, rich in symbolic and fantastical elements. After returning to Russia in 1914, he actively participated in the 1917 Revolution and was appointed commissioner of fine arts in Vitebsk, where he founded an Academy. In 1920 he moved to Moscow, then to Berlin in 1922, and finally returned to Paris in 1923, where he collaborated with gallerist Ambroise Vollard, creating engravings for Gogol's Dead Souls and La Fontaine's Fables.

During World War II, due to racial laws and Nazi persecution, Chagall and his family hid in Marseille at Villa Air-Bel, receiving help from American journalist Varian Fry to escape to Spain and Portugal. In June 1941 he emigrated to the United States, where he remained until 1948, maintaining intense artistic activity and meeting numerous European artists fleeing Europe. Returning to France, he participated in the XXV Biennale, receiving the engraving prize for biblical works, and in 1950 moved to Vence, where the Message Biblique Museum was inaugurated in Nice in 1973, dedicated to his works with biblical and evangelical themes.

Chagall maintained a strong presence in the international artistic landscape until his death on March 28, 1985, in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, at the age of 97. Buried in the local cemetery, he is remembered as one of the greatest painters of the twentieth century, a bold colorist and narrator suspended between the real and the fabulous. His works, characterized by a repertoire of images that fuses human figures, animals, objects, and landscapes with biblical motifs, are found in major institutions such as the Marc Chagall National Museum in Nice, MoMA in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Tate in London, testifying to his fundamental contribution to European artistic movements of the twentieth century.