Tuesday 5 July 2016

FAMOUS ARTIST BIRTHDAY - MARC CHAGALL


MARC CHAGALL
Marc Zakharovich Chagall (6 July [O.S. 24 June] 1887 – 28 March 1985) was a Russian-French artist. An early modernist, he was associated with several major artistic styles and created works in virtually every artistic medium, including painting, book illustrations, stained glass, stage sets, ceramic, tapestries and fine art prints.


He had two basic reputations, writes Lewis: as a pioneer of modernism and as a major Jewish artist. He experienced modernism's "golden age" in Paris, where "he synthesized the art forms of Cubism, Symbolism, and Fauvism, and the influence of Fauvism gave rise to Surrealism". Yet throughout these phases of his style "he remained most emphatically a Jewish artist, whose work was one long dreamy reverie of life in his native village of Vitebsk."

"When Matisse dies," Pablo Picasso remarked in the 1950s, "Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what color really is".

See more about his life on Wikepedia here.


Although Marc Chagall is a well known name in the art world, I think few people could name more than one or two of his master works: I believe this is because he worked in so many different mediums and styles that his work is difficult to categorize.

Like Monet, Chagall lived a long life, being nearly 98 when he passed away. Unlike the wildly famous Monet, he didn't settle on a style and stick with it, he was an explorer and innovator, never content to focus. That sounds a bit like my artistic life and I find it fascinating that he was born at the same time of year as both myself and Frida Kahlo.

I think Chagall is a great example of an artist that knew how to create curiosity in his work. This is one of the stepping stones to great art.

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