Marc Chagall

A richly illustrated biography of a titan of twentieth-century art. Marc Chagall (1887-1985) is one of the most important representatives of European modernism. At first sight, his colorful compositions appear dreamlike, but upon closer inspection, they tell haunting stories of homeland, exile, love, and loss. Chagall's pictorial worlds are as multi-faceted as they are idiosyncratic. They were significantly influenced by three cultural circles with which the artist was closely linked: the Eastern European Judaism of his childhood and youth, the art of pre-revolutionary Russia, and the modern painting of France. In his extensive oeuvre, which extends from the early twentieth century to the 1980s, Chagall takes up central human subjects like love and loss, which he varies with great inventiveness over the years. The artist's themes are based not only on personal experience, but also examine dance, drama, music, and literature in depth. In this volume, Ilka Voermann provides a clear and knowledgeable introduction to the most important stations of artistic development in Chagall's ninety-seven-year life.