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Russian intellectuals. The complete French text
of the
Lettres philosophiques
was not published
until 1966.
ater in Moscow (1920-21) and was then made
people's commissar for the fine arts in Vitebsk
but soon fell out with Soviet authorities. He emi-
grated in 1922 first to Berlin and, in 1923, to
Paris. With the exception of a brief interlude in
the United States (1941-48), Chagall remained
in Paris for the rest of his long life. Chagall's
style—a distinctive mixture of folk art, primi-
tivism, and cubism rich in reds, blues, and
greens, with Russian and Jewish religious and
provincial themes from his childhood as its sub-
ject—took shape early in his career. His art is
populated with rabbis, musicians, acrobats, ped-
dlers, and animals from his Belorussian years
(e.g.,
Return from the Synagogue,
1925;
The Blue
Violinist,
1947). Although Chagall criticized orga-
nized religion, God is everywhere present in his
work, often in the love of two human beings
floating in space, daringly defying the rules of
gravity as in paintings such as,
Over the City,
1917;
Double Portrait with Wineglass,
1917; and
The Bridal Pair before the Eiffel Tower,
1938. Bibli-
cal scenes appear in his work from the mid-
1920s onward. In later years his work achieved
a more monumental scale, as he turned to
widely acclaimed murals and stained-glass win-
dows (Paris Opera, 1964; Metropolitan Opera,
1966; and the Jerusalem stained-glass cycle of
The Twelve Tribes,
1961). Although Chagall never
returned to Russia after 1922, his widow
arranged for a successful exhibition of his work
in Moscow in 1987.
Chagall, Marc
(1887-1985)
artist
Chagall was born Mark Zakharovich Segal to a
Jewish family near Vitebsk in czarist Belorussia.
After three years of art studies in St. Petersburg,
in 1910 he moved to Paris, where he lived in an
artists' commune. In Paris he was greatly influ-
enced by cubism, a dominant influence in his
later work. Returning to Russia in 1914, he sup-
ported the
OCTOBER REVOLUTION
, and in 1918 he
became director of the Vitebsk Popular Arts
Institute. He worked with the State Jewish The-
Chaikovsky, Nikolai Vasilievich
(1850-1926)
revolutionary
A product of the nobility, Chaikovsky played an
influential role at several stages of the revolu-
tionary movement. While a student at St. Peters-
burg University, he participated in student
disturbances of 1868-69. In 1869 he also formed
with Mark Natanson the first revolutionary pop-
ulist organization in Russia, known as the Chai-
kovsky Circle. Until 1874, when it was closed by
the authorities, the circle was the center of revo-
Marc Chagall
(Hulton/Archive)
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