Marc Chagall was born in Vitebsk in 1887, one of the nine children of a poor Jewish family. In 1907 he enrolled at the Imperial School of the Encouragement of the Arts at Saint Petersburg, then at Leon Bakst's Swanseva School, where he discovered Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh. In Paris in 1910, Chagall met Max Jacob, Guillaume Apollinaire, Modigliani. His first exhibition was held in Berlin in 1914 ; the same year Chagall showed at the Salon des Indépendants and Salon d'Automne in Paris. Upon returning to Russia in 1915, he married Bella Rosenfeld, his daughter Ida bing born a year later. In 1918, Chagall was named commissary of art of Vitebsk, and in 1919 founded an academy were Pougny, Lissitsky and Malevitch worked. But the latter two and Chagall failed to get on, and Chagall lost his post. Settling in Moscow, he designed costumes, stage sets and curtains, and painted murals for the Yiddish Theatre. In 1920 he began writting "my life", published in France in 1931 ; in 1922 he is contacted by Vollard for a book-illustration project. He thus made 96 prints (both etchings and aquatints) for Gogol's "The dead souls" and 100 etchings for La Fontaine's Fables. For a further Vollard commission, the Bible, published by Tériade, he made 105 prints (etchings) and travelled to Palestine, Syria and Egypt. In 1926, two important shows of Chagall's work were held in Belgium and New-York.
In 1941, the rise antisemitism made Chagall move to New-York with his family ; in 1944 his wife Bella died. He designed the stage costumesand scenery for Stravinsky 's Firebird in 1945. After 2 retrospective shows in New-York and Chicago, Chagall moved back to France in 1948, settling in Provence where he married Valentine Brodsky (Vava). Extending his creative activity, he made ceramics, sculptures, and stained-glass (for Metz Cathedrale). Continuing his book illustrating, Chagall made 42 prints (lithographs) for Daphnis and Chloë, published by Tériade in 1961, and 38 original lithographs in colours for the Cirque in 1967. His average yearly output of prints (especially lithographs) ranged from 15 to 20 ! They number in all well over one thousand.
In 1963, Chagall painted the ceiling of the Paris Opera ; the Musée National du Message Biblique in Nice opened in 1973. Numerous retrospective shows of his work were held world-wide, including The Louvre in 1977. Chagall died in St Paul de Vence in 1985 aged 98, and two years later, for the first time, the Pouchkine Museum held an exhibition spanning his career.