- Person
- Marc Chagall
- Lived
- 1887–1985
- Field
- Painting
- From
- Russian-French
The story
Marc Chagall owed his life to the United States. Born into a Jewish family near Vitebsk in 1887, he had made his home in France, but in April 1941 the Vichy regime stripped him and his wife Bella of their French citizenship, and they were arrested in Marseille. With the help of Alfred Barr of the Museum of Modern Art, who got Chagall's name onto a list of endangered artists, and the rescue network run by the American journalist Varian Fry and the US Vice-Consul Hiram Bingham IV, they were freed and escaped. They sailed from Lisbon and reached New York on 21 June 1941. Chagall was one of more than 2,000 people rescued by Fry's operation, and he spent the war years in America.
In 1974 Chagall came to Chicago to install his large mosaic The Four Seasons in the city's Loop, and he formed a friendship with Mayor Richard J. Daley. He was inspired to create a set of stained-glass windows for the Art Institute of Chicago. After discussions with the museum, he made the windows a tribute to the American Bicentennial of 1976, and in particular to the commitment of the United States to cultural and religious freedom.
Working with his longtime glassmaker Charles Marq in Reims, Chagall produced a band of windows about 32 feet long and 8 feet high. They celebrate the arts in America, with sections devoted to music, painting, literature, architecture, theatre and dance, along with the Statue of Liberty, an American eagle, the Chicago skyline and the signing of the Declaration of Independence, all set in Chagall's luminous blues. Religious symbols, including a menorah, appear among them. They were dedicated on 15 May 1977, in memory of Mayor Daley, who had died the previous year, as a gift of Chagall, the City of Chicago and the museum's Auxiliary Board.
These were Chagall's first stained-glass windows without a primarily religious subject. The America Windows became one of the Art Institute's most beloved works and even appeared prominently in the 1986 film Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Removed in 2005 for conservation during the museum's expansion, they were reinstalled in a new gallery on 1 November 2010, protected from direct sunlight and condensation.
For a Jewish refugee who had found safety in America, the theme of freedom carried deep personal meaning. Today the windows greet visitors from around the world as a celebration of liberty by an artist whose own life had been saved by an American rescue effort.
Why it matters
The windows offer museum visitors from around the world a celebration of the freedom of belief and expression that had once saved the artist's life.
About Marc Chagall
One of the 20th century's most beloved painters; pioneer of modernism rooted in Jewish folk life.
More about Marc Chagall
- Marc Chagall designed a cathedral window at the age of 90Marc Chagall designed a stained-glass window for Chichester Cathedral at the age of 90, inspired by Psalm 150, and it was unveiled by the Duchess of Kent in 1978.
- Marc Chagall's twelve windows for a Jerusalem hospitalMarc Chagall spent two years creating twelve stained-glass windows of the tribes of Israel for the synagogue of Jerusalem's Hadassah Medical Center, installed in February 1962.
- Marc Chagall gave France his Biblical Message paintingsMarc Chagall donated 17 large paintings and 38 gouaches of his Biblical Message series to France, which built a national museum for them in Nice, opened on his birthday in 1973.
- Marc Chagall painted the ceiling of the Paris OperaOn 23 September 1964 Marc Chagall's new ceiling for the Paris Opera was unveiled: nearly 2,400 square feet of canvas paying tribute to great composers, dancers and actors.
- Marc Chagall filled every window of a Kent village churchAll Saints Church in Tudeley, Kent, is the only church in the world with all twelve of its windows by Marc Chagall, installed between 1967 and 1985.
- Marc Chagall founded an art school in his home townIn 1918, as commissar of arts for Vitebsk, Marc Chagall founded the city's People's Art College and an art museum, opening art education to ordinary people.
- Marc Chagall made the Peace window at the United NationsIn 1964 Marc Chagall created Peace, a stained-glass window at the United Nations in New York honouring Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld, who died on a peace mission in 1961.
- Chagall's Mainz windows became a sign of reconciliationFrom 1978, aged 91, Marc Chagall created windows for St Stephan's church in Mainz as a sign of Jewish-Christian friendship, in a city once called the capital of European Jewry.
- Marc Chagall painted murals for Moscow's Jewish theatreFor the 1921 opening of Moscow's State Jewish Chamber Theatre, Marc Chagall painted huge murals of dancers, fiddlers and acrobats that became a landmark in theatre history.
- Marc Chagall preserved a vanished Jewish world in paintMarc Chagall's paintings of Vitebsk, its fiddlers, rabbis and wooden houses, became the most important visual record of East European Jewish life, and inspired Fiddler on the Roof.
Sources
- Marc Chagall Wikipedia
- America Windows Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.