M A R C . C H A G A L L

of a Jewish family;

in 1907 he went to St. Petersburg

returning to Vitebsk in 1909;

discovered Cubism in Paris in 1910;

from Cubism he develops his own

highly personal fantasy rooted in

the village life of his boyhood;

for Chagall, Cubism was not a rigid

dogma but a gateway to an art

that could ignore the law of gravity,

naturalistic color, and traditional

treatments of space;

returned to Russia in 1914;

appointed Commissar of Fine Arts

in Vitebsk after the Revolution;

moved to Paris in 1923 after

a disagreement with Malevich;

during the 1920s and 1930s his art

became more lyrical, the aggressive

sharp edges of his earlier work giving way

to a flowing treatment;

came to the US in 1941 with WWII;

painted a new ceiling for the Paris Opera

in 1964;

died in1985.