Marc Chagall - Russian Quotes

4 Sourced Quotes

View all Marc Chagall Quotes
In response I am sending you some pictures which I painted in Paris out of homesickness for Russia. They are not very typical of me; I have selected the most modest ones for the Russian exhibition.

Marc Chagall
Only the great distance that separates Paris from my native town prevented me from going back.... It was the Louvre that put end to all these hesitations. When I walked around the circular Veronese room and the rooms that the works of Manet, Delacroix and Courbet are in, I desired nothing more. In my imagination Russia (where Chagall was born) took the form of a basket suspended from a parachute. The deflated pear of the balloon was hanging down, growing cold and descending slowly in the course of the years. This was how Russian art appeared to me, or something of the sort.... It was as if Russian art had been fatally condemned to remain in the wake of the West.

Marc Chagall
After completing my work (his murals for the Jewish Theater) I thought, as has been agreed, that ot would be shown in public as a series of my latest things. The management will agree with me that I can find no inner peace as a painter until the 'masses' see my work etc. It turned out that the things (the murals) had been put into a 'cage', as it were, where they can be seen at the very best by (if you will forgive me for saying so) Jews at close quarters. I like the Jews a lot (there's enough 'proof' of that) but I like the Russians as well and some other nationalities, and I am used to painting serious things for many 'nationalities'.

Marc Chagall
The sun has only ever shone for me in France (it certainly did that!). I have got used to beating the streets of Paris, happy beyond words dreaming of a life 125 years long - with the Louvre radiant in the distance. (Chagall couldn't go back to Paris because of the outbreak of the first World War in 1914). Having ended up in the Russian provinces, I have decided to die.

Marc Chagall