Book Description
Organised around three essays, the principal narrative essay is written by Susan Goodman, the Curator at the Jewish Museum, New York responsible for co-ordinating the exhibition. This essay takes the form of a story-line narrative, presenting nearly all the works contained in the exhibition. It covers Chagall's Russian years, starting with his arrival in Vitebsk from Berlin in 1914, his marriage to Bella, the outbreak of World War I and the subsequent Russian Revolution. Next it examines Chagall's establishment of the Art School in Vitebsk where his Tutor, Yehuda Pen, was installed as its head and the subsequent falling out with other artists in residence, Kasimir Malevich and El Lizzitsky, which ended with Chagall's own dismissal and his move to Moscow in 1920. The essays ends with the huge series of murals Chagall was commissioned to paint for The Jewish Theatre in Moscow, before he left Russia in 1922.
Whilst the years spent in Paris can be credited as the key formative influence on Chagall's mature work, the years in Russia were crucial in helping to build on, and to define, the ideas and influences of the Paris years. Together they established those themes and motifs to which Chagall would repeatedly return throughout his long career: Love, Marriage, The War, Jewish Folklore and The Jewish Theatre.
Two other shorter essays, one by Evgenija Petrova and the other by Dr. Aleksandra Shatskikh, will trace respectively the shifting trajectory of Chagall's work in Soviet and Russian art history, and the interrelation and impact of Pen and Chagall upon each other; the contribution of each artist to the history of Russian art; as well as their sources in Russian and Jewish art.
