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Marc Chagall Quotes
1887–1985 Belarus
Marc Chagall (July 7 1887 – 28 March 1985) was a Russian-Jewish painter who was born in Belarus, then part of the Russian Empire. He worked in Paris from 1910 till 1914, and after his Russian years (1914–1922) he returned to Paris.
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8 quotes
In our lives there is a simple colour, as on an artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the colour of love.
C. Robertson (1998)
If I weren't a Jew (in the sense in which I use the word) then I wouldn't be an artist, or at least not the one I am now.
If a symbol should be discovered in a painting of mine, it was not my intention. It is a result I did not seek. It is something that may be found afterwards, and which can be interpreted according to taste.
In response I am sending you some pictures which I painted in Paris out of homesickness for Russia. They are not very typical of me; I have selected the most modest ones for the Russian exhibition.
The stars were my best friends. The air was full of legends and phantoms, full of mythical and fair-tale creatures, which suddenly flew away over the roof, so that one was at one with the firmament.
I know I must live in France, but I don't want to cut myself off from America. France is a picture already painted. America still has to be painted. Maybe that's why I feel freer there. But when I work in America, it's like shouting in a forest. There's no echo.
When I painted Christ's parents I was thinking of my own parents. The bearded man is the Child's father. He is my father. [Chagall stated this in 1950]
I am working in Paris. I cannot for a single day get the thought out of my head that there probably exists something essential, some immutable reality, and now that I have lost everything else (thank God, it gets lost all on its own) I am trying to preserve this and, what is more, not to be content. In a word: I am working.
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