Two or three o'clock in the morning. The sky is blue. Dawn is breaking. Down there, a little way off, they slaughtered cattle, cows bellowed, and I p… - Marc Chagall

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Two or three o'clock in the morning. The sky is blue. Dawn is breaking. Down there, a little way off, they slaughtered cattle, cows bellowed, and I painted them. I used to sit up like that all night long. It's already a week since the studio was cleaned out. Frames, eggshells, empty two-sou soup tins lie about higgledy-piggledy.. .On the shelves, reproductions of El Greco and Cézanne lay next tot the remains of a herring I had cut in two, the head for the first day, the tail for the next, and Thank God, a few crusts of bread.

English
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About Marc Chagall

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.

Also Known As

Native Name: Moishe Zakharovitch Chagalov
Alternative Names: Marc Zakharovich Chagall Chagall Mark Zakharovich Shagal Moses Shagal Marḳ Shagal Marŭkkŭ Syagal Syagal Mark Shahal Moshe Segal Mark Sacharovich Schagal Chagall Mark Shagal M. Shagal Marc Szagal Mark Zakharovich Shagal' m. chagall Moïche Zakharovitch Chagalov
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Additional quotes by Marc Chagall

The Jews might well, were they of such a mind (as I am, lament the disappearance of all those who painted the wooden synagogues in the small towns and villages (oh why haven't I gone to my grave with them!), and the carvers of the wooden 'school mallets' – 'quiet boy!' (and if you should see them in Ansky's collection, you’ll get a shock!). But is there really any difference between my ancestor from Mohiliev, who painted the synagogue there, and myself, who painted the Jewish theater in Moscow (and a good theater it is at that)?.. .I am convinced that, were I to stop shaving, you would see in me a deceptive likeness.

Only the great distance that separates Paris from my native town prevented me from going back.. .It was the Louvre that put end to all these hesitations. When I walked around the circular Veronese room and the rooms that the works of Manet, Delacroix and Courbet are in, I desired nothing more. In my imagination Russia [where Chagall was born] took the form of a basket suspended from a parachute. The deflated pear of the balloon was hanging down, growing cold and descending slowly in the course of the years. This was how Russian art appeared to me, or something of the sort.. .It was as if Russian art had been fatally condemned to remain in the wake of the West. (a later quote on his first arrival in Paris, 1910)

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Back in the days (a later reflection on his early Parish years) when I was in Paris in my studio in 'La Ruche', through the partition I heard two Jewish emigrants arguing: 'Well, what would you say? Wasn't Antokolsky a Jewish artist? And Israels? And what about Liebermann?' The dim light of the lamp lit up my picture, which was upside down (that's the way I work – so consider yourself yourselves lucky!). As morning came, and the Parisian sky started to brighten up, I had to laugh about the futile comments of my neighbours on the fate of Jewish art: 'You two wind-backs can carry on – but I've got work to do'.

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