Marc Chagall  22 March until 12 September 2012

JHM Art Gallery

Marc Chagall (1887-1985) is considered one of the most inspiring Jewish artists of the twentieth century. His life was profoundly influenced by the major political events of the period; his contact with almost all the major art movements of his time shaped him as an artist. Chagall owes his widespread popularity to his nostalgic depictions of a Jewish world long gone, enchanting love scenes, lively circus performers and his exuberant use of colour. The JHM, in cooperation with the Triton Foundation, is pleased to display three works by this versatile artist.

Marc Chagall spent most of his life in France. Yet, the time he spent as a boy in the Hasidic milieu of his hometown Vitebsk (in Belarus) was a recurring theme in much of his later work.

Around 1910, after his training in St. Petersburg, Chagall relocated to Paris. There he came in contact with Fauvism and Cubism. With the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, he ended up back in Russia. After the 1917 Russian Revolution, he briefly led the Vitebsk People's Art College. It was there that he came in contact with Suprematism.

Returning to France in 1923, Chagall gradually acquired international recognition as a painter, watercolourist, illustrator and etcher but he was not seen as a trendsetter. Forced to flee in 1941, he spent the remaining years of the Second World War in the United States.

Chagall remained active as a painter, designer, glass and ceramist artist until a very old age. He died in 1985 in Saint-Paul de Vence in Southern France.