Marc Chagall: Modern Master Exhibition

As Robert Hughes (he was an art critic for Time Magazine and wrote an art history text book that I had to read for my American Art history class years ago) once said, Marc Chagall was "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century." As an art historian with a partner who is half Jewish, Mr. Hughes is right!

At the Tate Museum in Liverpool, there is a Chagall retrospective going on until October 6th called "Chagall: Modern Master." The exhibit features more than 60 paintings and selections of works on paper from his career that took him around the world; from his humble beginnings in Russia (an area that is now present day Belarus), to his time spent in Paris before World War I to his trip to Berlin during the mid 1910s and the time he later spent in his native Russia during the time of the Soviet Revolution of 1917.

The artwork that is on display at the Tate Modern shows Chagall's growth from the narrative folklore artwork  to his own signature style that blends influences of cubism, expressionism, fauvism but also is a look into Chagall's Russian Jewish heritage.

In 2009, I actually had the chance to see an exhibition of 'Chagall and the Artists of the Russian Jewish Theater, 1919-1949' at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco which showed the artwork that was created for the Russian Jewish Theater during the 1920s and 30s.