- Person
- Marc Chagall
- Lived
- 1887–1985
- Field
- Painting
- From
- Russian-French
The story
Marc Chagall was born in 1887 into a Jewish family near Vitebsk, in what is now Belarus. He became one of the great painters of the twentieth century, known for dreamlike scenes of village life, floating lovers and biblical stories, and later for stained glass in cathedrals at Reims and Metz, the Fraumünster in Zurich, the United Nations and the Art Institute of Chicago. He had visited the Land of Israel as early as 1931, while preparing his etchings for the Bible.
In 1960 he began windows for the synagogue of the new Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem. The twelve windows represent the twelve tribes of Israel, the descendants of Jacob's twelve sons, drawing on the blessings of Jacob and Moses at the end of Genesis and Deuteronomy. They are arranged in groups of three on each side of the room. Chagall devoted two years to the task, working with the glassmaker Charles Marq, whose new technique let him use as many as three colours on a single pane of glass. Each window is about 11 feet high and 8 feet wide, much larger than anything he had made before.
On completion in 1961 they were exhibited at the Louvre in Paris and at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, then installed permanently in Jerusalem. The synagogue was dedicated on 6 February 1962, during Hadassah's golden anniversary celebrations, with Chagall present. At the dedication he called a stained-glass window "a transparent partition between my heart and the heart of the world".
Critics have called the Jerusalem Windows his greatest work in stained glass, and in 1973 Israel issued a set of 12 stamps showing them. They also survived war. Four of the windows were damaged during the Six-Day War in 1967, and Chagall installed replacements in 1969, while traces of bullet holes remain in three of them.
More than sixty years after their dedication, the windows still glow above the hospital synagogue. Patients, families, staff and tourists from around the world come to see them, and they remain among the most celebrated works of art in Jerusalem.
Why it matters
Chagall's windows fill a hospital synagogue with colour and light, offering beauty and comfort to patients, families and visitors from around the world.
About Marc Chagall
One of the 20th century's most beloved painters; pioneer of modernism rooted in Jewish folk life.
More about Marc Chagall
- Chagall's America Windows celebrate religious freedomMarc Chagall created the America Windows for the Art Institute of Chicago as a tribute to the US Bicentennial and America's commitment to cultural and religious freedom.
- 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 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
- Hadassah Medical Center Wikipedia
- Chagall Windows PBS Global Connections
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.