Mark Zakharovich (Moses Khatskelevich) Chagall (French Marc Chagall, Yiddish מאַרק שאַגאַל). Born July 7, 1887 in Vitebsk, Vitebsk province (now Vitebsk region, Belarus) - died March 28, 1985 in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Provence, France. Russian, Belarusian and French artist of Jewish origin. In addition to graphics and painting, he was also involved in scenography and wrote poetry in Yiddish. One of the most famous representatives of the artistic avant-garde of the 20th century.
Movsha Khatskelevich (later Moses Khatskelevich and Mark Zakharovich) Chagall was born on June 24 (July 6), 1887 in the Peskovatik area on the outskirts of Vitebsk, was the eldest child in the family of clerk Khatskel Mordukhovich (Davidovich) Chagall (1863-1921) and his wife Feiga-Ita Mendelevna Chernina (1871-1915). He had one brother and five sisters.
The parents married in 1886 and were each other's first cousins.
The artist’s grandfather, Dovid Yeselevich Chagall (in documents also Dovid-Mordukh Ioselevich Sagal, 1824 - ?), came from the town of Babinovichi, Mogilev province, and in 1883 settled with his sons in the town of Dobromysli, Orsha district, Mogilev province, so in the “Lists of real estate owners property of the city of Vitebsk”, the artist’s father Khatskel Mordukhovich Chagall is recorded as a “dobromyslyansky tradesman”; the artist's mother came from Liozno.
Since 1890, the Chagall family owned a wooden house on Bolshaya Pokrovskaya Street in the 3rd part of Vitebsk (significantly expanded and rebuilt in 1902 with eight apartments for rent). Marc Chagall also spent a significant part of his childhood in the house of his maternal grandfather Mendel Chernin and his wife Basheva (1844 - ?), the artist’s paternal grandmother), who by that time lived in the town of Liozno, 40 km from Vitebsk.
He received a traditional Jewish education at home, studying Hebrew, the Torah and the Talmud.
From 1898 to 1905, Chagall studied at the 1st Vitebsk four-year school.
In 1906 he studied fine arts at the art school of the Vitebsk painter Yudel Pan, then moved to St. Petersburg.
In St. Petersburg, for two seasons, Chagall studied at the Drawing School of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, which was headed by N.K. Roerich (he was accepted into the school without an exam for the third year).
In 1909-1911 he continued studying with L. S. Bakst at the private art school of E. N. Zvantseva. Thanks to his Vitebsk friend Victor Mekler and Thea Brakhman, the daughter of a Vitebsk doctor who also studied in St. Petersburg, Marc Chagall entered the circle of young intelligentsia, passionate about art and poetry.
Thea Brahman was an educated and modern girl, she posed nude for Chagall several times.
In the autumn of 1909, during her stay in Vitebsk, Thea introduced Marc Chagall to her friend Bertha (Bella) Rosenfeld, who at that time studied at one of the best educational institutions for girls - the Guerrier School in Moscow. This meeting turned out to be decisive in the fate of the artist. The love theme in Chagall's work is invariably associated with the image of Bella. From the canvases of all periods of his work, including the later one (after Bella’s death), her “bulging black eyes” look at us. Her features are recognizable in the faces of almost all the women he depicts.
In 1911, Chagall went to Paris with the scholarship he received, where he continued to study and met avant-garde artists and poets living in the French capital. Here he first began to use the personal name Mark. In the summer of 1914, the artist came to Vitebsk to meet his family and see Bella. But the war began and the return to Europe was postponed indefinitely.
On July 25, 1915, Chagall's wedding to Bella took place. In 1916, their daughter Ida was born, who later became a biographer and researcher of her father’s work.
In September 1915, Chagall left for Petrograd and joined the Military-Industrial Committee. In 1916, Chagall joined the Jewish Society for the Encouragement of Arts, and in 1917 he and his family returned to Vitebsk. After the revolution, he was appointed authorized commissioner for arts affairs of the Vitebsk province. On January 28, 1919, Chagall opened the Vitebsk Art School.
In 1920, Chagall left for Moscow and settled in the “house with lions” on the corner of Likhov Lane and Sadovaya. On the recommendation of A. M. Efros, he got a job at the Moscow Jewish Chamber Theater under the direction of Alexei Granovsky. He took part in the artistic design of the theater: first he painted wall paintings for the auditoriums and lobby, and then costumes and scenery, including “Love on Stage” with a portrait of a “ballet couple.”
In 1921, the Granovsky Theater opened with the play “The Evening of Sholom Aleichem” designed by Chagall. In 1921, Marc Chagall worked as a teacher at the Third International Jewish labor school-colony near Moscow for street children in Malakhovka.
In 1922, he and his family went first to Lithuania (his exhibition was held in Kaunas), and then to Germany. In the fall of 1923, at the invitation of Ambroise Vollard, the Chagall family left for Paris.
In 1937, Chagall received French citizenship.
In 1941, the management of the Museum of Modern Art in New York invited Chagall to move from Nazi-controlled France to the United States, and in the summer of 1941, Chagall's family came to New York. After the end of the war, the Chagalls decided to return to France. However, on September 2, 1944, Bella died of sepsis in a local hospital. Nine months later, the artist painted two paintings in memory of his beloved wife: “Wedding Lights” and “Next to Her.”
Relationship with Virginia McNeill-Haggard, the daughter of a former British consul in the United States, began when Chagall was 58 years old, Virginia - just over 30. They had a son, David (after one of Chagall's brothers) McNeill. In 1947, Chagall arrived with his family in France. Three years later, Virginia, having taken her son, unexpectedly ran away from him with her lover.
On July 12, 1952, Chagall married “Vava” - Valentina Brodskaya, owner of a London fashion salon and daughter of the famous manufacturer and sugar refiner Lazar Brodsky. But only Bella remained his muse all his life; until his death, he refused to talk about her as if she were dead.
In 1960, Marc Chagall received the Erasmus Prize.
Since the 1960s, Chagall mainly switched to monumental forms of art - mosaics, stained glass, tapestries, and also became interested in sculpture and ceramics. In the early 1960s, at the request of the Israeli government, Chagall created mosaics and tapestries for the parliament building in Jerusalem. After this success, he received many orders for the decoration of Catholic, Lutheran churches and synagogues throughout Europe, America and Israel.
In 1964, Chagall painted the ceiling of the Paris Grand Opera commissioned by French President Charles de Gaulle, in 1966 he created two panels for the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and in Chicago he decorated the National Bank building with the mosaic “The Four Seasons” (1972).
In 1966, Chagall moved to a house built especially for him, which also served as a workshop, located in the province of Nice - Saint-Paul-de-Vence.
In 1973, at the invitation of the Ministry of Culture of the Soviet Union, Chagall visited Leningrad and Moscow. An exhibition was organized for him at the Tretyakov Gallery. The artist donated to the Tretyakov Gallery and the Museum of Fine Arts. A.S. Pushkin's works.
In 1977, Marc Chagall was awarded France's highest award - the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, and in 1977-1978 an exhibition of the artist's works was organized in the Louvre, dedicated to the artist's 90th anniversary. Contrary to all the rules, the Louvre exhibited works by a still living author.
Chagall died on March 28, 1985 at the age of 98 in Saint-Paul-de-Vence. He was buried in the local cemetery. Until the end of his life, “Vitebsk” motifs could be traced in his work. There is a “Chagall Committee”, which includes four of his heirs. There is no complete catalog of the artist’s works.
...Girls from high school, long braids, lace dresses, small hats. Beauty beckons, entices. I want to touch the smooth girl’s cheek, gently hug her thin waist.
Calm down, rumbling like a hammer on an anvil, crazy heart! Calm down, because Moishe Segal is already timid in amorous matters.
It was in vain that Nina from Liozno, as if by chance, always found herself on the road of Moisha, who was heading to Yuryev Mountain to write sketches.
And Anyuta kept sighing. It’s night, they’re sitting next to each other on a bench, and you really want to touch the girl’s hand. And it is clear that the beauty is also thinking about this, but his body, softened, alien, bursting with desire, is constrained and motionless. Anyuta kissed Moisha herself. And he almost lost consciousness; the night suddenly became dazzlingly bright and sparkling.
Now he finds it funny and awkward to remember all this. Here the figure of Thea Brahman flashes behind the curtain, the girl is preparing dinner. And sometimes he comes up to Moishe lying on the sofa to kiss him. He's no longer embarrassed. And Thea knows no shame at all. Having heard that it was difficult to find a model, she herself offered to pose for his picture. Naked!
The blood was pounding in her temples when Thea took off her clothes and lay down on the couch. It was easy to work with such a beautiful young model; the strokes quickly covered the canvas. The work was almost completed during the previous trip to Vitebsk. The girl’s slightly heavy, but very graceful body, with wide, full hips, a round tummy and small breasts, is painted in pink and red tones. Tenderness and desire - they are exactly these colors, warm, affectionate.
The father, a well-known doctor in Vitebsk, was almost speechless when he saw his daughter naked on the couch where he usually examined patients. Thea is stubborn and willful. She said that she wanted to pose, and would pose, and let dad not interfere with the artist’s work...
... – Dinner is ready, Moishe!
Blessed house. Beautiful Vitebsk! My favorite city became especially expensive after St. Petersburg.
...It's hard to find your way. Difficult. Hurt.
The Neva rolls in cold waves. Luxurious houses and wide streets are indifferent to Moishe. Grocery store windows beckon, but you don’t have even ten kopecks in your pocket for zrazy. No money left. Not at all. His father gave him only twenty-seven rubles with him. As was his custom, he threw them to the ground and had to crawl in the dust again, collecting coins and banknotes. Dad's money disappeared quickly, too quickly. It’s good that Moisha was accepted into the school of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts without paying any fees and was immediately enrolled in the third year. Classes at school alternate with humiliating requests to patrons. But benefits are still not enough. Renting an apartment is an unaffordable luxury. The night smells of rotten straw and onions. You have to share your bed with some perpetually drunk worker. He seems to understand: Moishe is from a different cloth. And carefully presses himself against the wall. But the bed is narrow. A thick, heavy manly spirit makes it difficult to sleep.
– ... and still I don’t understand why you left? I would have studied at the school of Yehuda Pan. What's bad? – Thea gently ran through Moisha’s hair. - And we would not part.
He shook his head:
- No, what are you talking about! I absolutely could not stay there.
- But why? You were making progress! Mr. Peng was pleased. Feiga-Ita told me that he even exempted you from paying.
Moishe nodded: indeed, he freed him. Seeing his sketch, written in purple tones, Yehuda Pan pinched his beard for a long time, and then said excitedly:
- Very good. It's amazing how good it is. You don't have to give me any more money for tuition. Work! Work harder!
The teacher recognized his right to use any paints. But he could not accept the main thing. He didn’t understand that this was the way to see the world. People, nature. Moishe intuitively felt this and therefore drew what Pan would like. “Reading the Torah”, “Interpreter of the Talmud”, “Old Man in a Yarmulke”. This was close to the teacher who spoke only Yiddish. But Pan laughed at the angel soaring in the night sky. And these eternal boring tasks of his: plaster heads, still lifes.
“I’m tired of drawing old Voltaire,” Moishe smiled. “For some reason, his nose always bent to the side in my works.” And I couldn’t stand it for two months at Pan’s school. I took everything they could give me there. And he moved on.
Thea furrowed her thin eyebrows and exclaimed angrily:
- This is Avigdor! He stole you from me! I don't like him! I understand that I should be grateful to him. He introduced us. But sometimes I get so scared when I look at him!
“My dear Thea,” thought Moishe, pushing away the empty plate. “You can’t understand how proud I was of this acquaintance.” Avigdor looked at me so condescendingly when we were studying at the gymnasium. We even fought! Then he moved to a commercial school. Of course, the son of rich parents should not sit at a desk in a simple city gymnasium! And then, when I began to make progress with Pan, he began to carry my sketchbook. And he kept saying: work out with me, I’ll pay. And I didn’t work with him for money. I wanted to make friends with Avigdor. And how I loved being at his dacha! I’m no longer just a homeless person from Pokrovskaya Street, I have a rich acquaintance. And it was none other than Avigdor who advised me to go to St. Petersburg. How was I supposed to know that there were other schools! We left together. But as soon as we left Vitebsk, the abyss separating us became even deeper. He drank champagne, and I scoured for a crust of bread. He talked about being bored and not knowing how to have fun. And I was happy. Even eternal hunger did not stop me from enjoying how my soul began to live on canvas.”
Thea got up from the table and began clearing away the plates. Her fat white dog squealed offendedly: no one even thought of treating her to a tasty morsel.
“I’m uneasy,” the girl sobbed. “I always wonder how you are, where you are.” Jews are not allowed to settle there.
“Calm down,” Moisha smiled cheerfully. - Now everything is all right. Lawyer Goldberg signed me up as his lackey. Lawyers may keep Jewish servants. But, you know, even when I didn’t have these papers, I wasn’t particularly worried. Prison isn't so bad. They feed you there! And thieves and prostitutes treat me with respect.
Thea shook her head reproachfully and exclaimed:
- God! Why are you so stubborn! Moishe, it seems to me that you like to live like this. You like this eternal poverty, hunger. Come back! I ask. I beg you. Come back to Vitebsk!
– What am I going to do here? Work as a retoucher? Dear Thea, I was dying in this studio. How boring it was to cover up the pockmarks and wrinkles. This can drive you crazy. And then, I feel, I know for sure - I will become a good artist. You will see!
A skeptical expression appeared on the girl's pretty face. Feiga-Ita looked at Moisha the same way while listening to his stories. And my father’s eyebrows also rose in bewilderment and disbelief.
Nobody believes in success.
And he will come. A ray of hope always warms Moishe’s soul. “Be patient,” the angels whisper at night, tearing apart the sky to secretly communicate with him. - Be patient and work. Find your way. Just listen to your heart."
Angels must be trusted. But where is he, his path? Out of pure stubbornness, Moishe did not want to admit that he was just as bored at the school of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts as he was bored at Pan's. You can endure anything. If only you know: you are walking on the right road.
But he will find his way. It will bleed your legs, spit it out into the Neva, which always reeks of dampness, weak lungs, and turn into a skeleton covered in skin. But he will find this way! The only true path...
“Lie down for now,” Thea asked. “I’ll change clothes and we’ll go for a walk.” By the way, your suit is beautiful.
Moishe moved into the next room and stopped at a large mirror framed with forged metal lace.
The costume is really good. Mommy, mommy, what would he do without her. She was saving pennies. She saved, spun like a squirrel in a wheel, worked hard at the grocery store to buy excellent black English cloth. And go to the best tailor in town.
In the long, almost century-long life and creative biography of Marc Chagall, the “female” theme occupied far from the last place. And without exaggerating or belittling, I will say that in terms of beautiful women, Chagall was one of the men about whom they usually say: “Not a miss.” And this applies not only to his Muse, his first wife Bella Rosenfeld, not only to Virginia Haggard, with whom the artist was connected for six years of marriage, not only to Valentina Brodskaya, with whom Mark Zakharovich ended his earthly days, but also to his first youthful hobbies.
He knew how to please girls, charm them, when and what to say, and when to intrigue them with silence. And Chagall looked attractive in appearance.
By the age of 17-18, he was no longer a physically weak, stuttering boy who was constantly bullied at school, but a broad-shouldered, strong young man, with airy hair that “carried him like wings,” and a profile that could have been minted on Roman coins.
Agree, girls definitely pay attention to such young people.
In the early seventies of the now last century, when Marc Chagall, thanks to a Moscow exhibition, ended up in the Soviet Union after a fifty-year break, he met his sister Maryasya in Leningrad.
After two or three questions about health and sighs about the past years, Mark Zakharovich began asking Maryasya about the friends of his youth.
Maryasya, although she was the youngest in the family, probably knew something about her brother’s heartfelt secrets. But now, nodding at her nieces and instantly switching to Yiddish, she answered:
“Well, not in front of them,” implying that such details should not be told in front of children.
The nieces had long since outgrown Balzac’s age, and Yiddish was no secret to them, although they had spoken it very rarely lately, they just smiled in response. 
Mark Zakharovich hugged them by the shoulders and said:
-What glorious years those were. What a pity that you can’t return to them for at least an hour.
Chagall never took part in the Don Juan competitions. (I don’t know if there are any?). But if this had happened, I’m sure I would not have taken last place in such a tournament.
I am not going to engage in archaeological excavations of the artist’s personal life. And I will only talk about what he made public himself.
The first girl Chagall dated was Nina from Liozno. Mark came to the town to visit his many relatives. There were moonlit walks and nights together. Hot kisses. In a small place where everything was in plain sight, they started talking about a city youth who was too bold. Some spoke disapprovingly of modern morals, others thought with regret that their own youth was long gone... But things didn’t go beyond walks for Mark and Nina. Chagall would later write that he had success, “but failed to take advantage of it.” I think there was no regret in these lines, there was simply a farewell smile to the past years.
Then Chagall met Anyuta and persistently courted her for several years. From these meetings there were feelings that in his mature years Chagall expressed with the words: “In amorous practice, I am a complete ignoramus.”
By his third youthful romance with high school student Olga, Mark became much more decisive. “Desire was seething inside me, and she dreamed of eternal love.” Their interests followed parallel paths, until one day Mark saw Thea Brahman.
Actually, her name was Tauba. But from her early youth the girl was fascinated by the art and poetry of the “Silver Age”, the dramaturgy of Ibsen, and the work of Hauptmann. And she even changed her name to Teya, trying to imitate the character from Ibsen’s drama “The Builder Solnes.”
Teya was an unusual girl even for Vitebsk, which even in those years was not considered a deep province. Maybe she didn't look like a supermodel, in today's parlance. Slightly plump. Broad shoulders, steep forehead, coarse straight hair braided in a thin girlish braid. She has big strong hands, which she always hid in her pockets. She loved to shake hands, and if she shook it, she would almost crush her fingers.
And even, according to Bella Rosenfeld, her closest friend and classmate at the prestigious Mariinsky Gymnasium, “the face is neither a girl nor a guy.” Although it’s hardly worth taking your friends’ assessments seriously. 
Thea liked the boys' company. She behaved somewhat strangely. She either kissed the guys on the lips or fought with them. She was, as they say, “my guy.” And Thea’s jokes were biting and juicy. The most militant guys who lived on the Dvina embankment were afraid not so much of Marquis’s dog, which she always took with her, as of its “sharp tongue.”
But with her friends, Thea was different. She treated girls with tenderness. I could spend hours admiring a girl’s long neck or beautiful hands.
Thea's mood often changed. She could sing for hours, tell funny stories incessantly, then she would begin to feel sad - and melancholy would fall on her. And then she stood for a long time at the window and watched as the carriages drove down the cobblestone street towards the station.
Thea's parents, Wulf Brahman and his wife, had a very hospitable and hospitable home. Interesting people often gathered here in the evenings. They acted out scenes from plays and played music.
At first, Thea’s mother was the center of all companies. Outwardly tiny, fragile, frail, alive, like a bird. Her long, curved nose looked like a beak, and her bulging black eyes sparkled.
She worked as a costume designer in the theater. Actors often visited their house: both local and visiting celebrities. And musicians and artists followed them. There are always delicious pies and buns on the table, which the hostess baked herself.
“The neighboring houses are frozen, listening to sonatas by Mozart and Beethoven. A passerby will stop under these windows, stand for a minute, reveling in the melody, and, enchanted, will go on his way,” Bella Rosenfeld, a regular visitor to these evenings, wrote in her book “Burning Lights.” 
The love of music was passed on to the children. And all three sons played music: some on the violin, some on the piano, and Thea herself played the piano well. Although the sons followed in their father’s footsteps in choosing a profession. Boris became a pharmacist, and Reuben, or, as he was later called, Ruben, was the head physician of the Vitebsk Infectious Diseases Hospital before the Great Patriotic War.
The head of the family, Wulf Brachman, worked in a Red Cross pharmacy. But in the city he was considered a doctor, and patients sought to see him. He selected the right medicine and gave a kind word at parting. Satisfied relatives paid fifty dollars for the visit.
The peasants also loved him. People even came from remote villages, especially on market days. In the evenings, Wulf Brahman visited homes. Thea often helped him in his work, especially when he received patients at home. She knew what open and purulent wounds were, knew how to bandage and calm the sick with words.
True, Wulf Brahman rarely took part in evening home parties. Maybe because he was invisible compared to his wife.
The small one-story house of the Brahmans, which was decorated with many flowers and where many songbirds lived, became a permanent gathering place for Thay's friends. Avikdor, or, speaking in Russian, Victor Mekler, the son of a wealthy merchant, who dreamed of a career as an artist, loved to come here.
Meckler and Chagall knew each other well and were classmates. And when Meckler saw that Chagall was making progress in drawing and painting, he asked Mark to give him lessons. He promised money for it. Chagall refused the money. “We’d better be friends,” he replied.
One day Victor offered to look into the Brahmins’ house in the evening. Meckler loved to be visible, loved to be paid attention to. He wanted to introduce Mark to the bohemian company as a curiosity of the season, a talented artist who draws on the stove at home, and when he gets off it, the sisters snatch the paintings from his hands and place them instead of rugs on the freshly washed floor. Probably, handsome, charming, “properly” brought up, Meckler was sure that the “small-town” Chagall would amuse the company and that’s all. But female psychology has mysteries that are impossible to understand with elementary logic. Thea liked Mark, or it would be more correct to say Moses. The artist became Mark only in France, choosing a European-sounding pseudonym. Thea saw in the young artist a naturalness that was rare in their companies. There was not an ounce of pretense in him, not an ounce of falsehood. He said what he thought. At times it sounded naive. But Thea enthusiastically hung on every word.
Probably, her passion for Chagall was to some extent an internal protest against the mannerisms that were considered good manners in “decent” companies, and at the same time, Teya wanted to be close to the young artist. I wanted to help Mark and participate in his affairs.
And Thea also liked Mark’s thin lips. When he laughed, they could not cover their mouth and teeth. She and her mother had the same thin lips.
“It’s hereditary for us,” Thea said. “And you are probably our relative... Or a soul mate.”
Mark was interested in the house he found himself in and the company that surrounded him. It wasn’t often that he visited houses where people gathered who easily juggled such words as “scene”, “painting”, “romance”...
Mark immediately noticed Thea. But it was more of curiosity. The girl dressed unusually. Her outfits were far from fashionable; this is how artistic bohemia dressed. For example, she could wear a blouse that was worn by grandmothers or even great-grandmothers. My mother brought these outfits from the theater. But everything was in harmony: the girl had excellent taste.
One day Mark heard Thea speaking German. Not God knows what an achievement for a high school student. Mark knew Yiddish, Russian, and could read Hebrew. He had never encountered German, and it seemed that the girl spoke this language as if it were her own. Then he heard Thea reciting poetry in a restrained voice. She remembered a lot of poems, all literary novelties. Mark learned that Thea writes poetry herself. As she danced, Mark noticed her slender, strong legs.
Where is the line that separates curiosity from attachment? And do we ourselves notice when we cross it?
Mark has changed his daily route. Previously, to get to the city center, he walked to Station Square, and from there headed to the bridge over the Dvina. Now he was walking along the street where Thea lived. And he did this on purpose to see her again.
In the evenings they walked along the banks of the Dvina. Mark talked about the lessons he takes from Yudel Peng. He talked about an artist who seemed strange to everyone. And Thea said that an artist is not only a profession, it is a state of mind. There are few real artists, and they always seem strange.
In the fall of 1906, Thea left for St. Petersburg. She entered the famous women's Bestuzhev courses. The young people corresponded. Thea, who had considerable literary talent, talked about the capital of the Russian Empire and the artistic and artistic life that was literally seething in St. Petersburg. And who knows what played a decisive role when, in the winter of 1906-1907, Marc Chagall and Victor Mekler went to study in St. Petersburg. Although Chagall himself wrote that Victor was the initiator of the trip, if Teya had not been in St. Petersburg, would Mark have so persistently asked his father for money for this trip or would he have calmly reconciled himself with provincial life?
If Victor and Teya, having financial support from their parents, could not think about food, but go to theaters, attend exhibitions, and be interested in new literature, then Mark had a hard time in the capital city. The entire cash reserve taken from home amounted to 27 rubles, accumulated in the family “for a rainy day.” For the rest, you could only rely on yourself.
At first, Chagall had to obtain a residence permit in St. Petersburg, which not all Jews were given. You had to be an academician or at least be listed as one of his servants, be a craftsman or, in extreme cases, an agent of a businessman. Mark’s father made an agreement with one merchant for the first time, and he helped get the necessary papers. On the recommendation of his teacher Yudel Peng, Mark gets a job as a retoucher for the photographer Jaffa. Thank God he was familiar with such work in Vitebsk. Then Chagall tried to draw signs, but this idea was not successful. The owners of shops and shops did not see a future celebrity in him and called his art “daubs.” Eventually, philanthropist and lawyer Goldberg took Chagall under his wing, assuring the authorities that he was employing him as a servant.
Mark begins to study at school with Nicholas Roerich. The young artist's work is noticed and he is awarded a small scholarship. Then he goes on to study with Lev Bakst. Chagall is slowly settling into the capital. And I think that Teya gave him confidence, who said: “Don’t give up painting. You are talented. You have to go through difficulties and success will come to you.” The words of the girl to whom Mark trusted his secrets encouraged him. They walked along the Moika embankment. Thea read Blok's poems. Chagall talked about the artist Gauguin. And one day he admitted: “I want to draw a naked woman. But I don’t have money for models.” And Thea, laughing, replied: “I will be your model.”
She came to the small room under the stairs where the artist lived and which was his studio. She undressed, however, asking Mark to turn away, and sat down on the couch with a dented mattress.
-Are you sleeping here? – she asked in surprise.
But Chagall did not hear her words. He stood, afraid to turn and look at Thea.
“Artist, draw,” Thea said, laughing. - How should I sit?
Chagall turned and began to look at Thea. He could not take his eyes off the curve of the shoulder, from the chest...
Thea caught his gaze, and a blush appeared on her face.
“Close the curtains,” she asked.
“No need,” Mark replied.
Through the small window, bright sunlight did not enter the room, but its presence was still felt. And the blush on Thea’s face was the same color as scarlet paint, to which a little ocher had been added.
– Will you draw? – now asked Thea timidly.
“Yes, of course,” Mark took his eyes off the girl and began quickly squeezing paints out of tubes onto the easel.
Once upon a time, Chagall surprised his first teacher Peng by painting an old Jewish man with only green paint. Now he was going to paint Thea in reddish-yellow tones.
“Put your head on the cushion and put your hands behind your head,” Mark asked.
Thea came to Chagall more than once. She posed for him. And I think that the “Nude” series of works appeared in 1908-1909 thanks to Thea Brahman.
Bella would later write how Thea convinced her:
- You see, we have to help them. You can't imagine the conditions under which they have to work. The family does not approve of their activities. There is nowhere to get models - it’s too expensive. And here we can help them - we can pose for sketches... Sketches of nudes...
Both Teya and Mark often came to Vitebsk. In the fall of 1909, during one of his visits to Vitebsk, Mark first saw Bella Rosenfeld, who at that time was studying at one of the best educational institutions for girls - the Guerrier School in Moscow. In those days, after a holiday in Germany, she was also in Vitebsk.
It happened in Thea's house. However, no one can tell you about this better than Chagall himself:
“At Thea’s house, I was lying on the sofa in her doctor father’s office. The sofa, upholstered in worn, sometimes holey black oilcloth, stood by the window.
Apparently, the doctor placed it on it to examine patients: pregnant women or simply sick people suffering from stomach, heart, or headaches.
I lay on my back, putting my hands under my head, and thoughtfully looked at the ceiling, the door, the edge of the sofa where Thea sat.
We have to wait. Thea is busy: busy in the kitchen, preparing dinner - fish, bread, butter - and her huge fat dog is spinning under her feet.
I chose this place on purpose so that when Thea came up to kiss me, I would stretch out my arms towards her.
Call. Who is this?
If it's a father, you'll have to get off the couch and hide.
So who is it?
No, just Taina's friend. Comes in and chats with Thea. I'm not going out. Or rather, I go out, but my friend is sitting with her back to me and doesn’t see me.
I have some strange feeling.
It’s a shame that they disturbed me and scared me away from my hope of waiting for Thea to come up.
But this friend who appeared at the wrong time, her melodious voice, as if from another world, for some reason excites me.
Who is she? Really, I'm scared. No, you need to come up and talk.
But she's already saying goodbye. He leaves without even looking at me.
Thea and I also go out for a walk. And on the bridge we meet her friend again.
She is alone, completely alone.
With her, not with Thea, but with her, I must be—it suddenly dawns on me!
She is silent, and so am I. She looks - oh, her eyes! - Me too. It’s as if we’ve known each other for a long time, and she knows everything about me: my childhood, my current life and what will happen to me; as if she was always watching me, was somewhere nearby, although I saw her for the first time.
And I realized: this is my wife.
The eyes shine on a pale face. Big, tall, black! These are my eyes, my soul.
Thea instantly became alien and indifferent.”
Youth, youth... A time when life seems eternal, and decisions are made instantly.
Mark and Thea saw each other more than once. But now Bella was between them.
Did Marc Chagall, already a world-famous artist, remember his first youthful love? Undoubtedly! And although we cannot do without general words that first love “lives” in each of us until the end of our days, I want to support this well-known truth with some facts.
Selma Rubenovna Brakhman lives in Moscow. She is a professor, teaches at the Higher Theater School. Shchepkin at the Maly Theater in Moscow, author of many books and articles. Selma Rubenovna is Thea Brahman’s niece.
Recently I received a letter from Moscow. Here is what Selma Brachman writes: “When Thea was already old, the daughter of Marc Chagall unexpectedly showed up to her, having found her, probably on behalf of her father, already a world-famous celebrity and millionaire. And Thea (completely in her own spirit) gave a stack of letters from Marc Chagall to her - just like that, not understanding the material value of this relic. In response, Chagall’s daughter sent her from Paris a black cashmere shawl and a book about Chagall, published by her son-in-law...”
Marc Chagall's daughter Ida visited the Soviet Union twice: in 1959 and 1963. Perhaps during one of her visits a visit to Thea Brahman took place. I will not comment on the style of the letter writer. Probably, the word “appeared” was a response to the “generous” gift sent from Paris - a cashmere shawl and a book about the artist.
Of course, Ida could only have learned about the letters written before her birth (although it is possible that the correspondence continued after Mark’s marriage) only from her father. And if the artist, after more than half a century, decided to take the letters (and this was not easy to do, after all, they didn’t live next door!), then there were lines there that were not intended for prying eyes and Sotbis auctions and could somehow influence a perfect picture of Mark and Bella's life.
I assume that these letters are still kept in the artist’s archive in Saint-Paul de Vence.
What was the future life of Thea Brahman? Some pages of her biography are known from the research of Lyudmila Khmelnitskaya, director of the Marc Chagall House-Museum in Vitebsk. She managed to find documents that were published in the “Bulletin of the Marc Chagall Museum” No. 2, 2000 (November).
“Thea Brahman became involved in active social life in December 1918. At the newly created Proletarian University in Vitebsk, she began giving lectures, was the leader of the seminar and acted as secretary. Later, she moved to the position of instructor of the extracurricular subdepartment of Vitgubnarraz (sorry, I myself had difficulty reading this word - A.Sh.) and instructor of the art department of museum construction. As noted in the archival document, “at the same time, she continued to conduct lectures and teaching in evening schools for adults, in music schools and clubs, giving a course on the history of literature and the Russian public and a lecture course on oral Russian folk art.”
Being from October 1919 to December 1920 an instructor in the museum section of the arts department, Teya Brakhman was engaged in “work on the inventory and classification of the collections of the Art and Archaeological Gubernia Museum and the Fedorovich Museum.”
...The intensive and varied social activities of Thea Brakhman in Vitebsk ended at the end of December 1920 with her departure “to Moscow at the disposal of the People’s Commissariat for Education.”
During these same years, and more specifically, in 1918, Marc Chagall was appointed Commissioner for Arts in Vitebsk; It oversees museums, art education and theatre.
And in 1920, Marc Chagall left for Moscow. First he... Then she...
Maybe this is just another chronological coincidence in the biographies of Mark and Thea, but how can you not pay attention to it.
Thea did not stay in Moscow for long. Maybe because Mark didn’t live there for long – only two years. The artist first went to Kaunas, then Berlin and Paris. And Teya comes to St. Petersburg again.
“By the age of thirty, the crowd of her admirers had dispersed, but one outlasted them all, and she married him. This was a man of a completely different circle, Grigory Zakharovich Gurvich, before the revolution, a modest bank employee, who during the NEP years turned into a businessman - these are lines from Selma Brakhman’s letters. “He had a huge apartment on Karavannaya Street, which was then occupied by various tenants, including the family of Thea’s older brother, Boris. So Thea and her daughter Gilda stayed in two adjacent rooms. Grigory Zakharovich was constantly traveling on some kind of commercial business, sending his wife expensive inlaid mahogany furniture and various rarities, and she often sat without a piece of bread.”
Thea's daughter was sick with peritoneal tuberculosis. And she was far from attractive in appearance; she suffered from strabismus. Thea imagined that the girl had musical talent. Perhaps my mother’s genes did not allow her to live in peace, and she believed that everyone in their family should be talented, creative people, gifted by nature. But, apparently, God decreed differently. Thea forced her daughter to sit at the piano for days on end. She didn't even go to public school. But Gilda’s musical career turned out to be her mother’s fantasy. This continued until the war. In 1941, Teya and her daughter were evacuated to Tyumen.
After the blockade was lifted, the family returned to Leningrad. They were given a room in a communal apartment on the Petrograd side. Thea taught in some fire department, Grigory Zakharovich was ill and soon died. Gilda found it difficult to get a job as a laboratory assistant in some hospital laboratory. The family was begging, but Thea still had her head in the clouds and did not complain about anything.
After her mother's death, Gilda sold a book about Marc Chagall. Remember, the same one that was sent from Paris in gratitude for the stack of letters in which Chagall wrote to Thea about his feelings. And with the proceeds she bought herself a winter coat, which she didn’t have.
Gilda behaved courageously, worked honestly, and was respected by her colleagues.
…There were a lot of people and a lot of flowers at Gilda’s funeral.
...The meager remains of the Brahman-Gurvich family's belongings were dismantled by neighbors in the communal apartment.
This is such a sad ending to this story...
Arkady Shulman
The publication uses drawings by Marc Chagall
She is the daughter of a rich jeweler, he is the son of a herring merchant. She is an incredible spiritual beauty, studies the works of Dostoevsky and plays in the theater with Stanislavsky. He is a not very attractive, unknown experimental artist who is still just looking for his artistic identity, teacher and himself. Two different worlds turned out to be so close that the love that broke out between them united these people forever and created a completely unique, original art that cannot be fit into any one direction - the appearance of the wizard Marc Chagall to the world.
This is a fantastic, surreal, heavenly letter from the painter, in whose paintings people fly, cows play violins, green and blue rickety houses seem to float somewhere into the wonderful world of his fantasies. Graphic artist, painter, set designer, poet, illustrator, master of monumental and applied arts. Marc Chagall is one of the most famous representatives of the world artistic avant-garde of the 20th century.
It all started in the city of Vitebsk in 1909, in the summer. They met by chance then at the girlfriend of Moishe Segal (that was Chagall’s name before his arrival in Paris), Thea Brakhman. Thea posed naked for him, and he lusted after her and then inspiredly painted his first fantastic female figures without clothes. It is difficult to imagine in which direction Chagall’s work would have moved if not for nineteen-year-old Bella Rosenfeld, who accidentally visited her friend Thea to talk about her impressions of a trip abroad. Moishe was lying on the couch where Dr. Brahman usually examined his patients. And suddenly I saw Bertha. Their eyes met...
They immediately realized that they were made for each other. Later, while walking around the city with Thea, Chagall saw this girl again. She stood alone on the bridge, on the same bridge from which he had more than once looked at the water and sky, inventing unusual subjects for his paintings.
In her book Burning Fires, Bella describes her first meeting with Chagall: “I don’t dare raise my eyes and meet his gaze. His eyes are now greenish-gray, the color of sky and water. I float in them like in a river.”
In his autobiographical book “My Life,” Marc Chagall paints approximately the same picture: “... She is silent, and so am I. She looks - oh, her eyes! - Me too. It’s as if we’ve known each other for a long time, and she knows everything about me: my childhood, my current life and what will happen to me; as if she was always watching me, was somewhere nearby, although I saw her for the first time. And I realized: this is my wife. The eyes shine on a pale face. Large, convex, black! These are my eyes, my soul...”
A year later they declared themselves bride and groom, but they got married only four years later, because Moses left for St. Petersburg and then to Paris to look for himself and his place in art. Bertha (Bella's first name) unconditionally accepted his decision and waited for him all these years, communicating with her beloved in tender and romantic letters. She understood him to the very depths and knew that he would definitely return for her.
Once he told her that he was born dead. Yes, yes, the doctors could not awaken life in him for a long time; they stabbed him with needles and spanked him on the buttocks. And he, stillborn, was like “a white bubble that was filled with Chagall’s paintings.” In the area of Vitebsk where he was born, terrible fires broke out at that time. Highly flammable wooden houses flared up one after another like matches, and the woman in labor and her child were urgently moved to a safe place on the other side of the city. “Ever since then I’ve been wanderlust!” - he explained to the bride. But Bella understood something else: like that stillborn child, he must definitely find and awaken within himself that artist Marc Chagall, whose paintings were already in him when he was born. And for this, gray and boring Russia is not enough; we need a bright, creative Paris. And she let him go, tying him to herself forever in her heart.
They both immediately realized that this is true love, which happens, perhaps, only once in a lifetime and which will change them forever. Bella could have become a famous actress, writer, philologist, but she chose the path of the wife of a genius - Marc Chagall, accepting all the difficulties associated with this. She and her presence largely determined the artistic world of his paintings. Almost all of his paintings in one way or another feature Bella or part of their common happy family world.
“Everything can be changed in life and in art, and everything will change when we get rid of shame by saying the word Love. There is real art in it: this is all my skill, and all my religion.”
In 1915, Moses Chagall and Bertha Rosenfeld got married, despite the reluctance of the bride's relatives to accept a poor artist from the family of a simple merchant into the family. But this marriage became a real creative impetus for the artist; it inspired and practically created Chagall anew. From now on, all or almost all of his paintings are dedicated to Bella. He flies with her so high into the sky that all his earthly attachments, houses, fences and bridges, cows and horses, also begin to soar over his beloved fairy-tale Vitebsk.
And even the revolution takes on some fabulous colors for Chagall; he opens an art school and becomes the Commissioner for Arts in the Vitebsk province. Now he could create decrees in the field of new art and turned around. In one of the decrees dated October 16, 1918 it was written: “All individuals and institutions with easels are invited to transfer them to the temporary disposal of the Art Commission for the decoration of the city of Vitebsk for the first anniversary of the October Revolution.” Long live the revolution of words and sounds! Revolution of new colors! They painted the houses of Vitebsk in the spirit of the wizard Chagall: green and blue circles, orange squares, blue rectangles on a white background. And on the main square, above the state institution, a flag with the image of a man on a green horse and the inscription: “Chagall-Vitebsk” fluttered.
Bella accepted his temporary passion for Soviet square art, she was next to him, with his students, sharing his ardent thirst for life and everything new that the revolution brought.
But Kazimir Malevich appeared in Vitebsk with his squares and Suprematism and called Chagall an outdated artist. He suppressed it with his even more radical revolutionism, arguing that new art should be non-objective, and in Chagall’s paintings, although they fly with their heads turned out, there are very real recognizable people, cows and horses. And also houses and fences, carpets and bouquets. In short, all this is a philistine, outdated little world. Reasoning in this way, Malevich lured all of Chagall's students to his school.
Maybe this happened fortunately, because what would have happened if Marc Chagall really became a revolutionary artist and began to serve Bolshevik art for real, and not according to his own imagination. And so, Malevich essentially saved Chagall for world art and for his own unique and fabulous poetics...
In 1922, Chagall and his wife went to Paris. Then, already a famous artist, in 1941 he took the last flight from Paris to the USA. Luck accompanies his salvation (although his paintings were demonstratively burned in Germany and then in Paris during the occupation) and glory, as if a guardian angel was constantly standing over his shoulder. This angel was his beloved wife Bella. She gave birth to his daughter Ida and shared all the hardships associated not only with questions about the content of his work: “Why is his cow green and his horse flies into the sky?” But also quite material ones, associated with lack of money, hunger and disease.
But in 1944, when Paris had already been liberated and the couple were preparing to return to France, she suddenly fell ill. Medicines at that time were allocated only to the army and doctors were unable to save Bella Chagall. She died…
It seemed to the artist that the sky had fallen on him with the full weight of hopelessness. With Bella, a major part of his soul died. For nine months he did not pick up brushes, paints, pastels at all... And then he realized that love had not died, it lived in his heart. And he will never lose her, because her main purpose is to live in his canvases. And again he entered his river, that stream of pure lyricism, which some researchers call “a poem in colors and lines.” A poem about love...
Once upon a time, as a child, a fortune teller predicted Chagall’s future: “An unusual life awaits you, you will love one extraordinary woman and two ordinary ones. And you will die in flight."
Chagall, indeed, had two more women whom he may have loved. But the female image, soaring with him over the eternal Vitebsk, which Paris became for him, remained the same. This was still his first and only love - Bella. And he died in flight in the literal and figurative sense of the word. In an unceasing creative flight in the elevator of his building, which carried him to the second floor in his studio on March 28, 1985.
Minchenok Dmitry- writer, playwright. Born in 1971. Graduated from GITIS. For many years he wrote stories and essays for MK-Sunday; later, based on these stories, the book “43 Love Stories from Famous People of the Planet” was published. In 1997, he won the playwright competition of the German and Baltic countries with the play “Who are you, Madame?” and in 1998, the play was staged by Nikolai Pinigin at the Vitebsk Academic Theater named after Yakub Kolas. The play became a prize-winner at the Contemporary Drama Festival in Belarus. Based on his unpublished novel “The Mysterious Mrs. Nelram,” he wrote a play, which was staged in 2001 at the Moscow Variety Theater under the title “Farewell, Marlene, Hello.”
D. Minchenko owns the scripts for several television documentaries on Channel One, the Rossiya and Kultura TV channels. Together with Olga Dubinskaya, he wrote a book-essay about modern and ancient Abkhazia, “Dreams about Apsny.” D. Minchenok is a laureate of the Irina Arkhipova and Vladislav Piavko Foundation Prize and a Silver Medal winner for a book about Isaac Dunaevsky in the “ZhZL” series, published in 2008.
Movsha Khatskelevich (later Moisey Khatskelevich and Mark Zakharovich) Chagall born on June 24 (July 6), 1887 in the Peskovatik area on the outskirts of Vitebsk, was the eldest child in the family of clerk Khatskel Mordukhovich (Davidovich) Chagall (1863-1921) and his wife Feiga-Ita Mendelevna Chernina (1871-1915). He had one brother and five sisters. The parents married in 1886 and were each other's first cousins. The artist’s grandfather, Dovid Yeselevich Chagall (in documents also Dovid-Mordukh Ioselevich Sagal, 1824-?), came from the town of Babinovichi, Mogilev province, and in 1883 he settled with his sons in the town of Dobromysli, Orsha district, Mogilev province, so in the “Lists of real estate owners property of the city of Vitebsk”, the artist’s father Khatskel Mordukhovich Chagall is recorded as a “dobromyslyansky tradesman”; the artist's mother came from Liozno. Since 1890, the Chagall family owned a wooden house on Bolshaya Pokrovskaya Street in the 3rd part of Vitebsk (significantly expanded and rebuilt in 1902 with eight apartments for rent). Marc Chagall also spent a significant part of his childhood in the house of his maternal grandfather Mendel Chernin and his wife Basheva (1844-?, the artist’s paternal grandmother), who by that time lived in the town of Liozno, 40 km from Vitebsk. He received a traditional Jewish education at home, studying Hebrew, the Torah and the Talmud. From 1898 to 1905, Chagall studied at the 1st Vitebsk four-year school. In 1906 he studied fine arts at the art school of the Vitebsk painter Yudel Pan, then moved to St. Petersburg. In St. Petersburg, for two seasons, Chagall studied at the Drawing School of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, which was headed by N.K. Roerich (he was accepted into the school without an exam for the third year). In 1909-1911 he continued studying with L. S. Bakst at the private art school of E. N. Zvantseva. Thanks to his Vitebsk friend Victor Mekler and Thea Brakhman, the daughter of a Vitebsk doctor who also studied in St. Petersburg, Marc Chagall entered the circle of young intelligentsia, passionate about art and poetry. Thea Brachman was an educated and modern girl; she posed nude for Chagall several times. In the fall of 1909, while staying in Vitebsk, Thea introduced Marc Chagall to her friend Bertha (Bella) Rosenfeld, who at that time was studying at one of the best educational institutions for girls - the Guerrier School in Moscow. This meeting turned out to be decisive in the fate of the artist. “With her, not with Thea, but with her I should be - suddenly it dawns on me! She is silent, and so am I. She looks - oh, her eyes! - Me too. It’s as if we’ve known each other for a long time, and she knows everything about me: my childhood, my current life, and what will happen to me; as if she was always watching me, was somewhere nearby, although I saw her for the first time. And I realized: this is my wife. The eyes shine on a pale face. Large, convex, black! These are my eyes, my soul. Thea instantly became a stranger and indifferent to me. I entered a new house, and it became mine forever” (Marc Chagall, “My Life”). The love theme in Chagall's work is invariably associated with the image of Bella. From the canvases of all periods of his work, including the later one (after Bella’s death), her “bulging black eyes” look at us. Her features are recognizable in the faces of almost all the women he depicts.
In 1911, Chagall went to Paris with the scholarship he received, where he continued to study and met avant-garde artists and poets living in the French capital. Here he first began to use the personal name Mark. In the summer of 1914, the artist came to Vitebsk to meet his family and see Bella. But the war began and the return to Europe was postponed indefinitely. On July 25, 1915, Chagall's wedding to Bella took place. In 1916, their daughter Ida was born, who later became a biographer and researcher of her father’s work. In September 1915, Chagall left for Petrograd and joined the Military-Industrial Committee. In 1916, Chagall joined the Jewish Society for the Encouragement of Arts, and in 1917 he and his family returned to Vitebsk. After the revolution, he was appointed authorized commissioner for arts affairs of the Vitebsk province. On January 28, 1919, Chagall opened the Vitebsk Art School.
In 1920, Chagall left for Moscow and settled in the “house with lions” on the corner of Likhov Lane and Sadovaya. On the recommendation of A. M. Efros, he got a job at the Moscow Jewish Chamber Theater under the direction of Alexei Granovsky. He took part in the artistic design of the theater: first he painted wall paintings for the auditoriums and lobby, and then costumes and scenery, including “Love on Stage” with a portrait of a “ballet couple.” In 1921, the Granovsky Theater opened with the play “The Evening of Sholom Aleichem” designed by Chagall. In 1921, Marc Chagall worked as a teacher at the Third International Jewish labor school-colony near Moscow for street children in Malakhovka. In 1922, he and his family went first to Lithuania (his exhibition was held in Kaunas), and then to Germany. In the fall of 1923, at the invitation of Ambroise Vollard, the Chagall family left for Paris. In 1937, Chagall received French citizenship.
In 1941, the management of the Museum of Modern Art in New York invited Chagall to move from Nazi-controlled France to the United States, and in the summer of 1941, Chagall's family came to New York. After the end of the war, the Chagalls decided to return to France. However, on September 2, 1944, Bella died of sepsis at a local hospital; nine months later, the artist painted two paintings in memory of his beloved wife: “Wedding Lights” and “Next to Her.” The relationship with Virginia McNeill-Haggard, the daughter of the former British consul in the United States, began when Chagall was 58 years old, Virginia - just over 30. They had a son, David (after one of Chagall's brothers) McNeill. In 1947, Chagall arrived with his family in France. Three years later, Virginia, having taken her son, unexpectedly ran away from him with her lover.
On July 12, 1952, Chagall married “Vava” - Valentina Brodskaya, owner of a London fashion salon and daughter of the famous manufacturer and sugar refiner Lazar Brodsky. But only Bella remained his muse all his life; until his death, he refused to talk about her as if she were dead. In 1960, Marc Chagall received the Erasmus Prize. Since the 1960s, Chagall mainly switched to monumental forms of art - mosaics, stained glass, tapestries, and also became interested in sculpture and ceramics. In the early 1960s, at the request of the Israeli government, Chagall created mosaics and tapestries for the parliament building in Jerusalem. After this success, he received many orders for the decoration of Catholic, Lutheran churches and synagogues throughout Europe, America and Israel. In 1964, Chagall painted the ceiling of the Paris Grand Opera commissioned by French President Charles de Gaulle, in 1966 he created two panels for the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and in Chicago he decorated the National Bank building with the mosaic “The Four Seasons” (1972). In 1966, Chagall moved to a house built especially for him, which also served as a workshop, located in the province of Nice - Saint-Paul-de-Vence.
In 1973, at the invitation of the Ministry of Culture of the Soviet Union, Chagall visited Leningrad and Moscow. An exhibition was organized for him at the Tretyakov Gallery. The artist donated to the Tretyakov Gallery and the Museum of Fine Arts. A.S. Pushkin's works. In 1977, Marc Chagall was awarded France's highest award - the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, and in 1977-1978 an exhibition of the artist's works was organized in the Louvre, dedicated to the artist's 90th anniversary. Contrary to all the rules, the Louvre exhibited works by a still living author. Chagall died on March 28, 1985 at the age of 98 in Saint-Paul-de-Vence. He was buried in the local cemetery. Until the end of his life, “Vitebsk” motifs could be traced in his work. There is a “Chagall Committee”, which includes four of his heirs. There is no complete catalog of the artist’s works.
