Marc Chagall's Colors

An early modernist, Marc Chagall (1887-1985) was associated with the École de Paris as well as several major artistic styles and created works in a wide range of artistic formats, including painting, drawings, book illustrations, stained glass, stage sets, ceramics, tapestries and fine art prints.

He experienced modernism's "golden age" in Paris, where "he synthesized the art forms of Cubism, Symbolism, and Fauvism, and the influence of Fauvism gave rise to Surrealism".

Yet throughout these phases of his style "he remained most emphatically a Jewish artist, whose work was one long dreamy reverie of life in his native village of Vitebsk".

When Matisse dies, Pablo Picasso remarked in the 1950s, "Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what colour really is".

According to Raymond Cogniat (French art critic, journalist, historian of art and expert on theatre design, 1896-1977), in all Chagall's work during all stages of his life, it was his colors which attracted and captured the viewer's attention.

During his earlier years his range was limited by his emphasis on form and his pictures never gave the impression of painted drawings.

He adds, "The colors are a living, integral part of the picture and are never passively flat, or banal like an afterthought.

They sculpt and animate the volume of the shapes... they indulge in flights of fancy and invention which add new perspectives and graduated, blended tones...

His colors do not even attempt to imitate nature but rather to suggest movements, planes and rhythms".

He was able to convey striking images using only two or three colors.

Cogniat writes, "Chagall is unrivalled in this ability to give a vivid impression of explosive movement with the simplest use of colors..."

Throughout his life his colors created a "vibrant atmosphere" which was based on "his own personal vision".