PAINTERS OF ALL TIME!
Leonardo Da Vinci, Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh and so many are to be included in this list. One of them, I would personally like to include is Marc Chagall.
Art critic Robert Hughes referred to Chagall as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century".
Marc Chagall was born Moishe Segal in a Lithuanian Jewish family in Liozna, near the city of Vitebsk (Belarus, then part of the Russian Empire) in 1887. At the time of his birth, Vitebsk's population was about 66,000, with half the population being Jewish. A picturesque city of churches and synagogues, it was called "Russian Toledo", after a cosmopolitan city of the former Spanish Empire. As the city was built mostly of wood, little of it survived years of occupation and destruction during World War II.
Marc Chagall did suffer a lot in the world war(s).
In Russia at that time, Jewish children were not allowed to attend regular Russian schools or universities. Their movement within the city was also restricted. Chagall therefore received his primary education at the local Jewish religious school, where he studied Hebrew and the Bible. At the age of 13, his mother tried to enroll him in a Russian high school, and he recalled, "But in that school, they don't take Jews. Without a moment's hesitation, my courageous mother walks up to a professor." She offered the headmaster 50 roubles to let him attend, which he accepted.
A turning point of his artistic life came when he first noticed a fellow student drawing. Baal-Teshuva writes that for the young Chagall, watching someone draw "was like a vision, a revelation in black and white". Chagall would later say that there was no art of any kind in his family's home and the concept was totally alien to him. When Chagall asked the schoolmate how he learned to draw, his friend replied, "Go and find a book in the library, idiot, choose any picture you like, and just copy it". He soon began copying images from books and found the experience so rewarding he then decided he wanted to become an artist.
Author Serena Davies writes that "By the time he died in France in 1985—the last surviving master of European modernism, outliving Joan Miró by two years—he had experienced at first hand the high hopes and crushing disappointments of the Russian revolution, and had witnessed the end of the Pale, the near annihilation of European Jewry, and the obliteration of Vitebsk, his home town, where only 118 of a population of 240,000 survived the Second World War."
Chagall's last work was a commissioned piece of art for the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. The maquette painting titled "Job" was completed, but Chagall died just before the completion of the tapestry Yavett Cauquil Pierce was weaving the tapestry under Chagall's supervision and was the last person to work with Chagall before his death. She left Vava and Marc Chagall's home at 4 pm on 28 March after discussing and matching the final colors from the maquette painting for the tapestry. He died that evening.
His relationship with his Jewish identity was "unresolved and tragic", Davies states. He would have died without Jewish rites, had not a Jewish stranger stepped forward and said the kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, over his coffin.
His life is really inspiring. He's one of those artists from whom we should learn the importance of challenging life and taking it to a different level.
For knowing more about his life check this link:
http://www.biography.com/people/marc-chagall-9243488
Leonardo Da Vinci, Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh and so many are to be included in this list. One of them, I would personally like to include is Marc Chagall.
Art critic Robert Hughes referred to Chagall as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century".
Marc Chagall was born Moishe Segal in a Lithuanian Jewish family in Liozna, near the city of Vitebsk (Belarus, then part of the Russian Empire) in 1887. At the time of his birth, Vitebsk's population was about 66,000, with half the population being Jewish. A picturesque city of churches and synagogues, it was called "Russian Toledo", after a cosmopolitan city of the former Spanish Empire. As the city was built mostly of wood, little of it survived years of occupation and destruction during World War II.
Marc Chagall did suffer a lot in the world war(s).
In Russia at that time, Jewish children were not allowed to attend regular Russian schools or universities. Their movement within the city was also restricted. Chagall therefore received his primary education at the local Jewish religious school, where he studied Hebrew and the Bible. At the age of 13, his mother tried to enroll him in a Russian high school, and he recalled, "But in that school, they don't take Jews. Without a moment's hesitation, my courageous mother walks up to a professor." She offered the headmaster 50 roubles to let him attend, which he accepted.
Author Serena Davies writes that "By the time he died in France in 1985—the last surviving master of European modernism, outliving Joan Miró by two years—he had experienced at first hand the high hopes and crushing disappointments of the Russian revolution, and had witnessed the end of the Pale, the near annihilation of European Jewry, and the obliteration of Vitebsk, his home town, where only 118 of a population of 240,000 survived the Second World War."
Chagall's last work was a commissioned piece of art for the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. The maquette painting titled "Job" was completed, but Chagall died just before the completion of the tapestry Yavett Cauquil Pierce was weaving the tapestry under Chagall's supervision and was the last person to work with Chagall before his death. She left Vava and Marc Chagall's home at 4 pm on 28 March after discussing and matching the final colors from the maquette painting for the tapestry. He died that evening.
His relationship with his Jewish identity was "unresolved and tragic", Davies states. He would have died without Jewish rites, had not a Jewish stranger stepped forward and said the kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, over his coffin.
His life is really inspiring. He's one of those artists from whom we should learn the importance of challenging life and taking it to a different level.
For knowing more about his life check this link:
http://www.biography.com/people/marc-chagall-9243488
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