My grandfather, a teacher of religion, could think of nothing better than to place my father – his eldest son, still a child – as a clerk with a firm of herring wholesalers, and his youngest son with a barber. No, my father was not a clerk, but, for thirty-two years, a plain workman [in the Jewish ghetto of Vitebsk ]. He lifted heavy barrels, and my heart used to twist like a Turkish pretzel as I watched him carrying those loads and stirring the little herrings with his frozen hands.. .Sometimes my father's clothes would glisten with herring brine. The light played above him, besides him. But his face, now yellow, now clear, would sometimes break into a wan smile.
Belarusian-French artist (1887–1985)
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. Among the celebrated painters of the 20th century, he is associated with the modern movements after Impressionism, but found the motifs of his painting in his religious Russian background.
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