Geneva - Prints and Multiples

Lithograph after Georges Braque. Signed in the plate Edition of 150 Dimensions: 76 x 117 cm Bibliography: « Les Métamorphoses de Braque» of Heger de Loewenfeld and Raphaël de Cuttoli , Editions FAC, Paris, 1989. In 1961 Georges Braque decided with his laidary friend Heger de Loewenfeld to pick up certain of his works to in order to create artworks, this beautiful litograph is one of them. Héméra in the Mythology: In Greek mythology Hemera was the personification of day and one of the Greek primordial deities. She is the goddess of the daytime and, according to Hesiod, the daughter of Erebus and Nyx (the goddess of night). Hemera is remarked upon in Cicero's De Natura Deorum, where it is logically determined that Dies (Hemera) must be a god, if Uranus is a god. The poet Bacchylides states that Nyx and Chronos are the parents, but Hyginus in his preface to the Fabulae mentions Chaos as the mother/father and Nyx as her sister. She was the female counterpart of her brother and consort, Aether (Light), but neither of them figured actively in myth or cult. Hyginus lists their children as Uranus, Gaia, and Thalassa (the primordial sea goddess), while Hesiod only lists Thalassa as their child. The father of Cubism Three Cubist that distinguishes art historian periods were initiated and developed by Georges Braque: The Cubist Cézanne (1907-1909), Executive (1909-1912) and synthetic (1912-1922). Post-Impressionist and fawn, Braque no longer adheres to the contingency of a decorative way or the other. Cézanne’s paintings exhibited at the Grand Palais during the retrospective of 1907 are a revelation: Cézanne sought and invented a pictorial language. In his footsteps, Braque went to the South with the reasons of the Master. He returned with Estaque landscapes and surprising Ciotat it keeps Cezanne geometric model and retains the “passages” continuity from one surface to another to create the sensation of “turning around” of the object represented. But he wants to go after the consequences of the vision of Cezanne. In his paintings Houses in L’Estaque (1908) it simplifies the volumes of houses, neglects detail by removing doors and windows: the plastic rhythm that builds the table. Large Nude , a masterpiece of the period, can be considered the first work of Cézanne cubism . Systematizing and deepening Braque discoveries open the door analytical cubism. In 1909, his painting became more cerebral than sensual. The pattern is recreated in the two-dimensionality of the canvas, leaving aside any illusionistic perspective. In Still Life with Violin, objects are analyzed facets according to their characteristic elements, each facet referring to a particular view of the object. There are so many facets of points selected view: Table reflects the knowledge of the object and the ubiquity of the eye. Moreover, Braque is looking for the essence of the objects in the world rather than their contingency, which explains the absence of light source and use of muted colors (gray, ocher), contingent aspects of the object . But formal logic has stepped facets, erased any anecdote to the object and ultimately led to his painting a hermetic more marked on the edge of abstraction (see the series of Castle Roche-Guyon ). Braque, anxious to keep the concrete and refusing at all costs that the logic of Cubism takes the paintings to abstract, reintroduced signs of reality in his paintings in 1912 marks the beginning of Synthetic Cubism. Historians speak of “signs of real” rather than reality because what interests Braque, this is not to put reality into a table, but to create a painting which, by its language, refers to the real. To do this, he invented two major techniques XX th century inclusions and contributions. The inclusions consist of painting objects that have no real depth, materials (wallpaper in Nature morte aux playing cards faux wood is a pictorial inclusion) or letters (calligraphic inclusion in Portuguese ), made first brush and a few months later stencil. Contributions are defined in contrast with the collage on canvas of foreign materials: glued or sand paper, sawdust, etc.. Regarding the collages, Braque used for the first time in September 1912 a piece of adhesive paper imitating faux wood Compote...

Henri Michaux - Original Zinchograph 1958 Dimensions: 32 x 25 cm Edition: G. di San Lazzaro. Henri Michaux (1899 - 1984) The French writer, painter and graphic artist Henri Michau...

after Jean Dubuffet - Man - Pochoir 1956 Dimensions: 32 x 25 cm Edition: G. di San Lazzaro. From the art review XXè siècle Unsigned and unumbered as issued

Salvador Dali - Bird on Tongue - Original Etching Dimensions: 38 x 28 cm Edition: 390 1967 On Rives Vellum References : Field 67-4 (p. 32-33) / Michler & Lopsinger 174 to 187.

Alberto Magnelli Original Lithograph Executed in 1967 for XXe Siecle (issue No. 29 "Vers un nouvel humanism") published in Paris by San Lazzaro There is a fold in the center, as issu...

after Pablo Picasso - The Human Comedy - Lithograph Signed and dated in the plate Dimensions: 32 x 24 cm This artwork is a lithograph in colors on wove paper after a drawing by Pablo...

SALVADOR DALI The Oak and the Reed (La chêne et le roseau) from Le Bestiaire de la Fontaine 1974 Hand signed by Dali Edition: /250 Conditions: A small tear defect has been restaured...

Leonor Fini - Orgy - Original Handsigned Lithograph Circa 1982 On colored paper Handsigned and Numbered Edition: 275 Dimensions: 69 x 52.5 cm

Salvador Dali - Zeus - from "Mythologie" Original Etching Dimensions: 76 x 46 cm 1965 Editor: Phika Pierre Argillet Edition: 12/150 Handsigned and numbered References : Michler et Lo...

Leonor Fini - Pregnant - Original Handsigned Lithograph Circa 1982 On colored paper Handsigned and Numbered Edition: 275 Dimensions: 69 x 52.5 cm Leonor Fini is considered one of the most important women artists of the mid-twentieth century, along with Leonora Carrington, Frida Kahlo, Meret Oppenheim, Remedios Varo, and Dorothea Tanning – most of whom Fini knew well. Her career, which spanned some six decades, included painting, graphic design, book illustration, product design (the renowned torso-shaped perfume bottle for Schiaparelli’s Shocking), and set and costume design for theatre, ballet, opera, and film. In this compellingly readable, exhaustively researched account, author Peter Webb brings Fini’s provocative art and unconventional personal life, as well as the vibrant avant-garde world in which she revolved, vividly in life. Born in Buenos Aires in 1907 (August 30 – January 18, 1996, Paris) to Italian and Argentine parents, Leonor grew up in Trieste, Italy, raised by her strong-willed, independent mother, Malvina. She was a virtually self-taught artist, learing anatomy directly from studying cadavers in the local morgue and absorbing composition and technique from the Old Masters through books and visits to museums. Fini’s fledging attempts at painting in Trieste let her to Milan, where she participated in her first group exhibition in 1929, and then to Paris in 1931. Her vivacious personality and flamboyant attire instantly garnered her a spotlight in the Parisian art world and she soon developed close relationships with the leading surrealist writers and painters, including Paul Eluard, Salvador Dali, Man Ray, and Max Ernst, who became her lover for a time. The only surrealist she could not abide because of his misogyny was André Breton. Although she repeatedly exhibited with them, she never considered herself a surrealist. The American dealer Julien Levy, very much impressed by Fini’s painting and smitten by her eccentric charms, invited her to New York in 1936, where she took part in a joint gallery exhibition with Max Ernst and met many American surrealists, including Joseph Cornell and Pavel Tchelitchew. Her work was included in MoMA’s pivotal Fantastic Art, Dada and Surrealism exhibition, along with De Chirico, Dali, Ernst, and Yves Tanguy. In 1939 in Paris she curated an exhibition of surrealist furniture for her childhood friend Leo Castelli for the opening of his first gallery. Introductions to her exhibition catalogues were written by De Chirico, Ernst, and Jean Cocteau. A predominant theme of Fini’s art is the complex relationship between the sexes, primarily the interplay between the dominant female and the passive, androgynous male. In many of her most powerful works, the female takes the form of a sphinx, often with the face of the artist. Fini was also an accomplished portraitist; among her subjects were Stanislao Lepri...

(after) Maurice Utrillo Title: L'Eglise Saint Pierre de Montmartre Pochoir with printed signature Edition of 550 Dimensions: 39 x 32 cm Information : This print was created for the portfolio "Le Village inspiré, Chronique de la bohème de Montmartre (1920-1950) " published by Vertex in 1950 Condition : Excellent Maurice Utrillo (1883 - 1955) The French painter Maurice Utrillo was born as the illegitimate son of the painter Suzanne Valladon in Paris on December 26, 1883. He was adopted by the Catalan art critic Miguel Utrillo...

Alfred Manessier - Lithograph 1962 From the art periodical XXe Siecle (no. 20) Dimensions: 32 x 24 Edition: G. di San Lazzaro. Unsigned and unnumbered as issued

Salvador Dali - The Trenches - Original Etching Dimensions: 38 x 28 cm Edition: 235 1967 Embossed signature On Arches Vellum References : Field 67-10 (p. 34-35)

Joan Miro - Night Sky - Original Lithograph Artist: Joan Miro Editor: Maeght Year: 1956 Dimensions: 23 x 20 cm Reference: Mourlot 235 Unsigned and unumbered as issued.

Alexander Calder - Lithograph - Behind the Mirror 1 lithograph created in 1976 Unsigned. Unnumbered from an edition of presumably large size. Dimensions: 38 x 28 cm Source: Lithogra...

after Henri MATISSE (1869-1954) Lithograph after a drawing of 1941 Printed signature and date Book plate from Aragon. Henri Matisse: Dessins, Thèmes et Variations : précédés de "...

Isia Leviant - Hands Signed Lithograph Dimensions: 70.5 x 54.5 cm Edition of 30 Signed and numbered Isia Leviant (1914 - 2006) was a Franco Israeli Kinetic painting artist. He is a...

Salvador Dali - Moshe Dayan - Original Handsigned Etching Dimensions: 38 x 28 cm 1968 Signed in pencil EA in Sanguine Jean Schneider, Basel References : Fi...

Salvador Dali - Woman on Horse - Original Stamp-Signed Etching Stamp signed by Dali Edition of 294 copies. Paper : Arches vellum. Dimensions : 16x12"....

Salvador Dali - Louis Pasteur - Original Handsigned Engraving Dimensions: 17.5 x 12.5 cm 1970 Signed in pencil EA Jean Schneider, Basel References : Fiel...

Work on paper Dimension of the "passe-partout" frame 27 x 37.5 cm

Marc Chagall, Original Lithograh depicting an instant of the Bible. Technique: Original lithograph in colours On the reverse: another black and white original lithograph Year: 1960...

Title: Decorative Documents Author: Alfons Mucha. Publisher: Paris: Librairie Centrale des Beaux-Arts, 13 Rue Lafayette. Emile Levy publisher. Published ...

The Ballet, Frontispiece for the book “Daphnis and Chloe” Lithograph in colors, 1969. Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued from an edition of 10,000. Printed ...

ARMODIO (1938) Abstract Composition Original Etching Signed and justified c.p.a Dimensions: 49,5 x 34,5 cm. Armodio was born in Piacenza in 1938. His training depends not so much on the attendance of the "Gazzola" Art Institute in his city, but also on the encounter with the painter Luciano Spazzali, whose study is the ideal place for experimentation and contamination. Here he met the painter Gustavo Foppiani, first teacher and then a fellow traveler; the two work together and then join the painter Carlo Bertè who will divide the study until 1980. This formed a free grouping animated by curiosity towards the most varied manifestations of culture, intent on reading reality under the sign of irony and inclined towards playful transgression. The first Piacenza personal exhibition was in 1963 at the Genocchi Gallery in Piacenza and in 1964, thanks to Foppiani, the Obelisk of Rome...

Original Lithograph by Jean Cocteau Title: Surrealist Creature Signed in the plate Dimensions: 32 x 25.5 cm Edition: 200 1959 Publisher: Bibliophiles Du Palais Unnumbered as issued

(after) Maurice Utrillo Inspired Village of Montmartre Pochoir with printed signature Edition of 490 Dimensions: 39 x 30 cm Information : This print was created for the portfolio "Le Village inspiré, Chronique de la bohème de Montmartre (1920-1950) " published by Vertex in 1950 Condition : Excellent Maurice Utrillo (1883 - 1955) The French painter Maurice Utrillo was born as the illegitimate son of the painter Suzanne Valladon in Paris on December 26, 1883. He was adopted by the Catalan art critic Miguel...

Salvador Dali - Original Handsigned Etching From La Quête du Graal Dimensions: 45 x 33 cm Handsigned Edition: 38/100 (from the rare deluxe suite aside from the standard edition) Cat...

Alberto Giacometti - Original Lithograph 1964 Dimensions: 38 x 28 cm From the journal Derrière le Miroir No. 148, 1964 Edition: Foundation Maeght at Saint Paul Alberto Giacometti...

Marc Chagall, Original Lithograh depicting an instant of the Bible. Technique: Original lithograph in colours (Mourlot no. 234) On the reverse: another black and white original litho...

after Jean Arp Moustaches et Squelette Executed in 1957 after the original artwork by the studios from Daniel Jacomet in Paris, France Pochoir Dimensions: 32 x 24 cm From the art re...

Salvador Dali - Lady Leaf - Original Stamp-Signed Etching Stamp signed by Dali Edition of 294 copies. Paper : Arches vellum. Dimensions : 16x12". Catalogue Raisonné : Field 68-6 (...

Salvador Dali - Corrida - Vintage Poster with Etching Etching made behind a menu in Restautant Duran as a tribute dinner to Salvador Dali and his wife Ga...

Pablo Picasso - Painter and His Model - Original Lithograph 1964 Dimensions: 30 x 20 cm Edition of 200 (one of the 200 on Vélin de Rives) Mourlot Press, 1964 Cramer, 128 Unsigned an...

Joan Miro Miro Original Abstract Lithograph Artist: Joan Miro Medium: Original lithograph on Rives vellum Portfolio: Miro Lithographe II ...

Marc Chagall Original Lithograph 1963 Dimensions: 32 x 24 cm Reference: Chagall Lithographe 1957-1962. VOLUME II. Unsigned edition of over 5,000 Condition : Excellent Marc Chagall (born in 1887) Marc Chagall was born in Belarus in 1887 and developed an early interest in art. After studying painting, in 1907 he left Russia for Paris, where he lived in an artist colony on the city’s outskirts. Fusing his own personal, dreamlike imagery with hints of the fauvism and cubism popular in France at the time, Chagall created his most lasting work—including I and the Village (1911)—some of which would be featured in the Salon des Indépendants exhibitions. After returning to Vitebsk for a visit in 1914, the outbreak of WWI trapped Chagall in Russia. He returned to France in 1923 but was forced to flee the country and Nazi persecution during WWII. Finding asylum in the U.S., Chagall became involved in set and costume design before returning to France in 1948. In his later years, he experimented with new art forms and was commissioned to produce numerous large-scale works. Chagall died in St.-Paul-de-Vence in 1985. The Village Marc Chagall was born in a small Hassidic community on the outskirts of Vitebsk, Belarus, on July 7, 1887. His father was a fishmonger, and his mother ran a small sundries shop in the village. As a child, Chagall attended the Jewish elementary school, where he studied Hebrew and the Bible, before later attending the Russian public school. He began to learn the fundamentals of drawing during this time, but perhaps more importantly, he absorbed the world around him, storing away the imagery and themes that would feature largely in most of his later work. At age 19 Chagall enrolled at a private, all-Jewish art school and began his formal education in painting, studying briefly with portrait artist Yehuda Pen. However, he left the school after several months, moving to St. Petersburg in 1907 to study at the Imperial Society for the Protection of Fine Arts. The following year, he enrolled at the Svanseva School, studying with set designer Léon Bakst, whose work had been featured in Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. This early experience would prove important to Chagall’s later career as well. Despite this formal instruction, and the widespread popularity of realism in Russia at the time, Chagall was already establishing his own personal style, which featured a more dreamlike unreality and the people, places and imagery that were close to his heart. Some examples from this period are his Window Vitebsk (1908) and My Fianceé with Black Gloves (1909), which pictured Bella Rosenfeld, to whom he had recently become engaged. The Beehive Despite his romance with Bella, in 1911 an allowance from Russian parliament member and art patron Maxim Binaver enabled Chagall to move to Paris, France. After settling briefly in the Montparnasse neighborhood, Chagall moved further afield to an artist colony known as La Ruche (“The Beehive”), where he began to work side by side with abstract painters such as Amedeo Modigliani and Fernand Léger as well as the avant-garde poet Guillaume Apollinaire. At their urging, and under the influence of the wildly popular fauvism and cubism, Chagall lightened his palette and pushed his style ever further from reality. I and the Village (1911) and Homage to Apollinaire (1912) are among his early Parisian works, widely considered to be his most successful and representative period. Though his work stood stylistically apart from his cubist contemporaries, from 1912 to 1914 Chagall exhibited several paintings at the annual Salon des Indépendants exhibition, where works by the likes of Juan Gris, Marcel Duchamp and Robert Delaunay were causing a stir in the Paris art world. Chagall’s popularity began to spread beyond La Ruche, and in May 1914 he traveled to Berlin to help organize his first solo exhibition, at Der Sturm Gallery. Chagall remained in the city until the highly acclaimed show opened that June. He then returned to Vitebsk, unaware of the fateful events to come. War, Peace and Revolution In August 1914 the outbreak of World War I precluded Chagall’s plans to return to Paris. The conflict did little to stem the flow of his creative output, however, instead merely giving him direct access to the childhood scenes so essential to his work, as seen in paintings such as Jew in Green (1914) and Over Vitebsk (1914). His paintings from this period also occasionally featured images of the war’s impact on the region, as with Wounded Soldier (1914) and Marching (1915). But despite the hardships of life during wartime, this would also prove to be a joyful period for Chagall. In July 1915 he married Bella, and she gave birth to a daughter, Ida, the following year. Their appearance in works such as Birthday (1915), Bella and Ida by the Window (1917) and several of his “Lovers” paintings give a glimpse of the island of domestic bliss that was Chagall’s amidst the chaos. To avoid military service and stay with his new family, Chagall took a position as a clerk in the Ministry of War Economy in St. Petersburg. While there he began work on his autobiography and also immersed himself in the local art scene, befriending novelist Boris Pasternak, among others. He also exhibited his work in the city and soon gained considerable recognition. That notoriety would prove important in the aftermath of the 1917 Russian Revolution when he was appointed as the Commissar of Fine Arts in Vitebsk. In his new post, Chagall undertook various projects in the region, including the 1919 founding of the Academy of the Arts. Despite these endeavors, differences among his colleagues eventually disillusioned Chagall. In 1920 he relinquished his position and moved his family to Moscow, the post-revolution capital of Russia. In Moscow, Chagall was soon commissioned to create sets and costumes for various productions at the Moscow State Yiddish...

Leonor Fini - Duo - Original Lithograph The Flowers of Evil 1964 Conditions: excellent Edition: 500 Dimensions: 46 x 34 cm Editions: Le Cercle du Livre Précieux, Paris Unsigned and...

Martin's vision of cities is cartographic. He is undoubtedly a man from another era - who likes the present - his plans of cities are an act of resistance in the era of google maps

Original Lithograph by Jean Cocteau Title: The Voice Signed in the plate Dimensions: 32 x 25.5 cm Edition: 200 1959 Publisher: Bibliophiles Du Palais Unnumbered as issued

Georges Rohner Original Handsigned Lithograph Dimensions: 76 x 54 cm Edition: HC XXI/XXX HandSigned and Numbered Ecole de Paris au seuil de la mutation des Arts Sentiers Editions Georges Rohner was one of the great painters of the “Ecole de Paris” and of the second mid twenty century. Georges Rohner, French (1913 - 2000) Georges Rohner Georges Rohner was a French painter, born July 20, 1913 in Paris and died on 3 November 2000 in Lannion. Georges Rohner was born in 1913 in Paris. His uncle George Stugocki, art teacher, gives him an early taste for art and thus develops his passion. In 1929 he left school to run in the "galleries" of the School of Fine Arts in Paris where he will be received. A year later, it will be admitted as a student in the workshop Lucien Simon alongside Robert Humblot...

Salvador Dali - Bicephale - from "Les Amours de Cassandre" Original Etching From the suite on Silk made for editions 9 to 34 Dimensions: 38,5 x...

Original Etching by Jean-Gabriel Domergue Dimensions: 33 x 25 cm 1924 Edition of 100 This artwork is part of the famous portfolio The Afternoon of a Faun. Jean-Gabriel Domergue Jea...

Zao Wou- Ki Title: XXIV Shakespeare's sonnets Technique: Etching and aquatint by Zao WOU -KI Dimensions: 35 x 28 cm Reference: Agerup No. 369 Information : Original print create...

(after) Maurice Utrillo Inspired Village of Montmartre Pochoir with printed signature Edition of 490 Dimensions: 39 x 30 cm Information : This print was created for the portfolio &q...

Salvador Dali - Nude Couple - Original Etching Dimensions: 38 x 28 cm Edition: 390 1967 On Rives Vellum References : Field 67-4 (p. 32-33) / Michler & Lops...

Leonor Fini - Cats - Original Engraving Mme.Helvetius' Cats Original etching created in 1985 Hand-Signed Conditions: excellent Edition: 71/100 Support: Arches paper. Dimensions: Pape...

Salvador Dali - Mission Dolores - San Francisco - Original Hand-Signed Etching Title: Mission Dolores - San Francisco Drypoint Handsigned Dimensions: 65 x 50 cm Edition EA Catalogue ...

Salvador Dali - Nude Couples - Original Handsigned Lithograph Dimensions: 52 x 65 cm 1970 Signed in pencil and numbered Edition : /CXX References : Field 70-8

Marino Marini - Knight - Original Lithograph 1970 Dimensions: 32 x 24 cm From the art review XXe siècle Unsigned and unumbered as issued

Joan Miro Miro Original Abstract Lithograph Artist: Joan Miro Medium: Original lithograph on Rives vellum Portfolio: Miro Lithographe III Year: 1977 Edit...

Salvador Dali - Spiky Buttocks - Original Stamp-Signed Etching Stamp signed by Dali Edition of 294 copies. Paper : Arches vellum. Dimensions : 16x12". Catalogue Raisonné : Field 6...

Salvador Dali - The Woman of the Shoe - Original Stamp-Signed Etching Stamp signed by Dali Edition of 294 copies. Paper : Arches vellum. Dimensions : 16x12". Catalogue Raisonné : ...

Raoul Dufy - French Dinner - Original Etching Dimensions: 13 x 10". Edition of 200 1940 Edition Les Bibliophiles du Palais, Paris Unsigned and unumbered as issued

André Lhote - Cubist Landscape - Original Etching Paris, Le Gerbier, 1946 Edition of 340 Signed in the plate Unumbered as issued

SALVADOR DALI (1904-1989) THE BELOVED FEEDS AMONG THE LILIES, 1971 Board for the series "The Song of Songs hymns" Aquatint and dry point on wove paper...

Salvador Dali - Venus, Mars and Cupidon - Handsigned Etching Title: Venus, Mars and Cupidon Dimensions: 76 X 56 cm From the Homage to Dürer Numbered: EA, Epreuve d'Artiste Rives ...

Jean Cocteau White Book - Autobiography about Cocteau's discovery of his homosexuality. The book was first published anonymously and created a scandal. Original Handcolored Lithograph...

Alexander Calder - Original Lithograph - from "Derriere le Miroir"Behind the Mirror 1976 Framed Dimensions: 38 x 56 cm Source: Derrière le miroir (DLM), n°141, 1976 Alexander Cald...

Joan Miro - Original Lithograph 1976 Dimensions: 32 x 25 cm Revue XXe Siècle Reference : Mourlot 1106 Edition: Cahiers d'art published under the direction of G. di San Lazzaro. Unsi...

Marc Chagall, Original Lithograph depicting an instant of the Bible. Technique: Original lithograph in colours Year: 1956 Sizes: 35,5 x 26 cm / 14" x 10.2" (sheet) Published by: Éditions de la Revue Verve, Tériade, Paris Printed by: Atelier Mourlot, Paris Documentation / References: Mourlot, F., Chagall Lithograph [II] 1957-1962, A. Sauret, Monte Carlo 1963, nos. 234 and 257 Marc Chagall (born in 1887) Marc Chagall was born in Belarus in 1887 and developed an early interest in art. After studying painting, in 1907 he left Russia for Paris, where he lived in an artist colony on the city’s outskirts. Fusing his own personal, dreamlike imagery with hints of the fauvism and cubism popular in France at the time, Chagall created his most lasting work—including I and the Village (1911)—some of which would be featured in the Salon des Indépendants exhibitions. After returning to Vitebsk for a visit in 1914, the outbreak of WWI trapped Chagall in Russia. He returned to France in 1923 but was forced to flee the country and Nazi persecution during WWII. Finding asylum in the U.S., Chagall became involved in set and costume design before returning to France in 1948. In his later years, he experimented with new art forms and was commissioned to produce numerous large-scale works. Chagall died in St.-Paul-de-Vence in 1985. The Village Marc Chagall was born in a small Hassidic community on the outskirts of Vitebsk, Belarus, on July 7, 1887. His father was a fishmonger, and his mother ran a small sundries shop in the village. As a child, Chagall attended the Jewish elementary school, where he studied Hebrew and the Bible, before later attending the Russian public school. He began to learn the fundamentals of drawing during this time, but perhaps more importantly, he absorbed the world around him, storing away the imagery and themes that would feature largely in most of his later work. At age 19 Chagall enrolled at a private, all-Jewish art school and began his formal education in painting, studying briefly with portrait artist Yehuda Pen. However, he left the school after several months, moving to St. Petersburg in 1907 to study at the Imperial Society for the Protection of Fine Arts. The following year, he enrolled at the Svanseva School, studying with set designer Léon Bakst, whose work had been featured in Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. This early experience would prove important to Chagall’s later career as well. Despite this formal instruction, and the widespread popularity of realism in Russia at the time, Chagall was already establishing his own personal style, which featured a more dreamlike unreality and the people, places and imagery that were close to his heart. Some examples from this period are his Window Vitebsk (1908) and My Fianceé with Black Gloves (1909), which pictured Bella Rosenfeld, to whom he had recently become engaged. The Beehive Despite his romance with Bella, in 1911 an allowance from Russian parliament member and art patron Maxim Binaver enabled Chagall to move to Paris, France. After settling briefly in the Montparnasse neighborhood, Chagall moved further afield to an artist colony known as La Ruche (“The Beehive”), where he began to work side by side with abstract painters such as Amedeo Modigliani and Fernand Léger as well as the avant-garde poet Guillaume Apollinaire. At their urging, and under the influence of the wildly popular fauvism and cubism, Chagall lightened his palette and pushed his style ever further from reality. I and the Village (1911) and Homage to Apollinaire (1912) are among his early Parisian works, widely considered to be his most successful and representative period. Though his work stood stylistically apart from his cubist contemporaries, from 1912 to 1914 Chagall exhibited several paintings at the annual Salon des Indépendants exhibition, where works by the likes of Juan Gris, Marcel Duchamp and Robert Delaunay were causing a stir in the Paris art world. Chagall’s popularity began to spread beyond La Ruche, and in May 1914 he traveled to Berlin to help organize his first solo exhibition, at Der Sturm Gallery. Chagall remained in the city until the highly acclaimed show opened that June. He then returned to Vitebsk, unaware of the fateful events to come. War, Peace and Revolution In August 1914 the outbreak of World War I precluded Chagall’s plans to return to Paris. The conflict did little to stem the flow of his creative output, however, instead merely giving him direct access to the childhood scenes so essential to his work, as seen in paintings such as Jew in Green (1914) and Over Vitebsk (1914). His paintings from this period also occasionally featured images of the war’s impact on the region, as with Wounded Soldier (1914) and Marching (1915). But despite the hardships of life during wartime, this would also prove to be a joyful period for Chagall. In July 1915 he married Bella, and she gave birth to a daughter, Ida, the following year. Their appearance in works such as Birthday (1915), Bella and Ida by the Window (1917) and several of his “Lovers” paintings give a glimpse of the island of domestic bliss that was Chagall’s amidst the chaos. To avoid military service and stay with his new family, Chagall took a position as a clerk in the Ministry of War Economy in St. Petersburg. While there he began work on his autobiography and also immersed himself in the local art scene, befriending novelist Boris Pasternak, among others. He also exhibited his work in the city and soon gained considerable recognition. That notoriety would prove important in the aftermath of the 1917 Russian Revolution when he was appointed as the Commissar of Fine Arts in Vitebsk. In his new post, Chagall undertook various projects in the region, including the 1919 founding of the Academy of the Arts. Despite these endeavors, differences among his colleagues eventually disillusioned Chagall. In 1920 he relinquished his position and moved his family to Moscow, the post-revolution capital of Russia. In Moscow, Chagall was soon commissioned to create sets and costumes for various productions at the Moscow State Yiddish Theater, where he would paint a series of murals titled Introduction to the Jewish Theater as well. In 1921, Chagall also found work as a teacher at a school for war orphans. By 1922, however, Chagall found that his art had fallen out of favor, and seeking new horizons he left Russia for good. Flight After a brief stay in Berlin, where he unsuccessfully sought to recover the work exhibited at Der Sturm before the war, Chagall moved his family to Paris in September 1923. Shortly after their arrival, he was commissioned by art dealer and publisher Ambroise Vollard to produce a series of etchings for a new edition of Nikolai Gogol's 1842 novel Dead Souls. Two years later Chagall began work on an illustrated edition of Jean de la Fontaine’s Fables, and in 1930 he created etchings for an illustrated edition of the Old Testament, for which he traveled to Palestine to conduct research. Chagall’s work during this period brought him new success as an artist and enabled him to travel throughout Europe in the 1930s. He also published his autobiography, My Life (1931), and in 1933 received a retrospective at the Kunsthalle in Basel, Switzerland. But at the same time that Chagall’s popularity was spreading, so, too, was the threat of Fascism and Nazism. Singled out during the cultural "cleansing" undertaken by the Nazis in Germany, Chagall’s work was ordered removed from museums throughout the country. Several pieces were subsequently burned, and others were featured in a 1937 exhibition of “degenerate art” held in Munich. Chagall’s angst regarding these troubling events and the persecution of Jews in general can be seen in his 1938 painting White Crucifixion. With the eruption of World War II, Chagall and his family moved to the Loire region before moving farther south to Marseilles following the invasion of France. They found a more certain refuge when, in 1941, Chagall’s name was added by the director of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City to a list of artists and intellectuals deemed most at risk from the Nazis’ anti-Jewish campaign. Chagall and his family would be among the more than 2,000 who received visas and escaped this way. Haunted Harbors Arriving in New York City in June 1941, Chagall discovered that he was already a well-known artist there and, despite a language barrier, soon became a part of the exiled European artist community. The following year he was commissioned by choreographer Léonide Massine to design sets and costumes for the ballet Aleko, based on Alexander Pushkin’s “The Gypsies” and set to the music of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. But even as he settled into the safety of his temporary home, Chagall’s thoughts were frequently consumed by the fate befalling the Jews of Europe and the destruction of Russia, as paintings such as The Yellow Crucifixion...