The Russian culture: a visual culture

The power that images, whether they be sacred or profane hold in Russian culture is reflected in all of Chagall’s work, both that from his time in Russia and from his long period of exile.

Chagall’s evolution between life and art: towards a poetic realism

Just like the artist’s life, the exhibition is also divided into two parts which follow the evolution of his style: more realistic while he was still living in Russia, gradually more dreamlike during his exile, when the animals, houses, villages and flowers of his past continued to accompany him, filtered through his memory and reworked into a sort of poetic realism.

Life and “death” of the Russian artist

Moishe Segal (this was his birth name, which became Chagall when transcribed into French) was born into a Jewish family in Liozna, near the city of Vitebsk, in modern-day Belarus, then part of the Russian Empire, on July 7th, 1887. On the same day, the village was attacked by Cossacks during a pogrom, and the synagogue was burned to the ground. It was an event which Chagall would frequently recall with the words «I was born dead».

The beginnings, moving to St. Petersburg and the beginning of a love story

In order to support himself and pay for his studies in St Petersburg, in addition to painting shop signs, he began painting his first original works. He stayed in the city until 1910, although every so often he returned to his home town, where in 1909 he met the love of his life and future wife, Bella Rosenfeld.

A new artistic rebirth and the friendship with the Montparnasse group

In 1910, Chagall left Russia for Paris: «I felt that, if I stayed in Vitebsk any longer, I should be covered with hair and moss», he wrote in his autobiography. A year later, in La Ruche, he came into contact with the artistic community of the nearby quarter of Montparnasse and made friends with Guillaume Apollinaire (who would define his work “supernatural”), Robert Delaunay, Fernand Léger and Blaise Cendrars, the poet who, from that point on, would name all his French works.

Paris: the city that made Chagall’s art bloom

«No academy could have given me all I discovered by getting my teeth into the exhibitions, the shop windows, and the museums of Paris», Chagall would later say, «my art needed Paris as much as a tree needs water».

The return to Vitebsk: an eight-year involuntary exile

In 1914 Chagall returned to Vitebsk, and the outbreak of the First World War and then the Russian revolution, kept him there for the next eight years. It was an emotional eight-year period.

The war years and a period of unexpected emotions

In 1915 he married Bella Rosenfeld and the next year their daughter Ida was born. He painted such famous works as The Jew in Pink, The Walk, Birthday, took an active part in the October Revolution of 1917; and exhibited in some important collectives. He was also nominated Art Commissar in Vitebsk, where he founded a free Academy of Arts and the Museum of Modern Art.

The move to Moscow: a dramatic and prolific artistic season

The situation came to a head, and in 1920 he was forced to resign and move with his wife and daughter to Moscow, where the government gave him a role teaching art to war orphans.
In the Soviet capital, Chagall also accepted a commission to decorate nine panels for the Moscow State Jewish Theatre “Granovskij” and sketch some scenery and characters: The Green Violinist , for example, is clearly a portrait of the Jewish artist with whom Chagall identified.

The return to Paris and the publication of his autobiography Ma Vie

In 1922, an embittered Chagall was finally able to leave revolutionary Russia and return to Paris. In the latter part of his time in Moscow he wrote his autobiography Ma Vie which, translated into French by his wife Bella, was published in France in 1931, illustrated with twenty plates which the artist etched in Berlin in collaboration with the printer Cassirer.The work, created at the time of his definitive break with his homeland, represented a sort of compendium of the Russian images and themes which Chagall intended to take with him into exile.

«My Russia will love me too»: the uprooted roots of his homeland

Although far away, Russia indeed remained for him the place where his roots lay, like an unrequited love which he dreamed of being able to conclude. It is not by chance that his autobiography finishes with the words «My Russia will love me too», which was used as the title to this exhibition.

The portrait of an artist with a magical past, on the edge of the avant-garde

The exhibition in Palazzo Roverella aims to generate discussion of the position occupied by Chagall in the history of 20th century art. The result is a portrait of an artist who chose to model his art on the forms of a magical and fantastic past but without ever renouncing the utopian demands of the avant-garde: rather, managing to make it coexist with the world of emotions and affectivity.