Two Unpublished Autobiographical Documents of Chagall

On Myself
Marc Zakharovich Chagall

I was born in the town of Vitebsk in 1887 into a Jewish family¹. From an early age, my father was a sales-clerk at the herring vendor, where up until the revolution he toiled for a pittance. By nature, he was a timid man, gentle and meek. Although very religious, he did not look like a “typical” Jew - but rather like a Belorussian peasant.

My mother was a simple woman (illiterate like my father) but full of energy; she died at the age of 45, and I owe everything to her. I cannot think of a better way to sum up my gratitude to this extraordinary woman. She is dead now, but the treasure of her talent is alive in me. She knew how to love and had understanding. She used to say: “My son, I do know you are talented, but I pity you, wouldn't you better be a 'bookkeeper'...?” She would correct my works, and for me, her opinion was of decisive importance.

I attended Cheder² in my childhood. I don't remember anything, except for a street lamp in the evening and two or three Melameds³, with no traces of the three “Rs” in my head. By the age of 13 I read “droshe” [a sermon] by heart over one-and-a-half hours; as for “Tfilin”⁴ (prayer headdresses), I forgot absolutely everything about them.

By the age of 14, thanks to the great efforts of my mother I was accepted at the official municipal four-year school⁵. It was not easy for my mother to get me admitted to the municipal school. I did not seem to be very keen on my studies, and I even remember having to repeat one year. Not surprisingly, I would have preferred to be drawing or swimming, or playing games with other boys, or “courting” girls.

In 1907⁶ I graduated from the municipal school and worked for a local photographer where I studied retouching photographic negatives. At that time my imagination was captured by the sign of a local artist - Yury Pen: “School of Drawing and Painting”, so that I, with 27 rubles from my father, dashed to Petrograd to study⁷. Those 27 rubles evaporated, and I could not even afford to buy a ten-kopeck plate of “zrazys” [meat balls]. There were days when I nearly fainted [from exhaustion and hunger]. Having contacted the sculptor Ilya Ginzburg⁸, I was offered a monthly allowance of ten rubles from Baron David Ginzburg⁹. I took an exam to enter the Baron Stieglitz School of Technical Design¹⁰, but failed it.

I joined the School [of Drawing] of the [Imperial] Society for the Promotion of Fine Arts¹¹. I don't know what was going on with me there; on the one hand I was praised and given grants, received a scholarship¹², on the other hand, I felt complete hopelessness at the idea of going on in this way ...

With Bakst and Dobuzhinsky¹³ teaching at the school, I met my destiny. Bakst changed my life for ever. I will never forget that man. In 1911 he invited me to Paris to assist him, but there [in Paris] we parted. I found myself in the milieu of contemporary European artists. At the Louvre, when I was standing in front of Manet's “Olympia” or the works of Courbet and Delacroix, I came to understand what Russian art was, and what the West meant. I was captivated by the moderation and taste of French art.

Over three years in Paris I began little by little to escape from poverty. I signed a contract with a French gallery “Malpel”¹⁴, and at last, my one-man exhibition was organized in the “Der Sturm” gallery in Berlin in 1914. I travelled to Berlin to the opening of the exhibition, and in three months I left for Russia to attend the wedding of my sister¹⁵.

The war broke out, the revolution broke out, but I am still here. All my works are trapped in Berlin, Amsterdam and Paris¹⁶. In 1915 in Russia (Vitebsk) where I settled, there were 60 of my studies and pictures¹⁷. I depicted almost everything I could see from my window, I painted my people and beggars, and exhibited them in Russia¹⁸. From the first days of the revolution I founded the People's School of Arts in Vitebsk, calling on some artists to come and teach - Mstislav Dobuzhinsky and Kazimir Malevich joined me¹⁹. In May 1920 my family (my wife and my daughter²⁰) and myself left Vitebsk for Moscow where I had been invited by the State Jewish Chamber Theatre (Bol. Chernysh., 12) to work on a series of murals. I painted seven major pictures, one of which, 312 by 140 inches, was “Introduction to the Jewish Theatre”²¹; the others were “Music”, “Dance”, “Drama”, “Literature”, “Love on the Stage” and a frieze, “Wedding Feast”.

March 5 1921
Artist Marc Chagall,
Petrograd, The Russian Museum

State Tretyakov Gallery Manuscript Department. Ф. 31. Ед. хр. 2073. Published in the French: Marc Chagall. Les anne'es russes, 1907-1922. Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Paris, 1995, FI 246.

1. The painter's father, Khatskel-Mordukhai (Zakhar) Shagal (c. 1863-1921), and mother, Feiga-Ita Chernina (c. 1870-1915) both came from the small shtetl Liozno, some twenty-five miles from Vitebsk. They were cousins, they married in 1886 and, according to family legend, moved to Vitebsk several months after their marriage, shortly before the birth of their first child.
2. Cheder - Jewish primary school for boys.
3. Melamed - A teacher in the Cheder.
4. Tfilin - two small black boxes containing texts of prayers. On weekdays men are to fix one of the boxes to their head and the other one to their hand. Boys are prepared for the ceremony of "placing the tfilin" two months before they turn 13.
5. The next phrase is crossed out: Jews were subject to discrimination; they had to pay a 50-ruble fee. In autumn 1900 Chagall was admitted to the Vitebsk municipal four-year vocational school which he supposedly finished in 1905.
6. A slip of the pen in the manuscript: In 1917.
7. In 1906 Chagall attended Yury Pen's art classes; in the winter of 1906-1907 he left Vitebsk for St. Petersburg.
8. Ilya Ginzburg (1859-1939), a sculptor and one of the founders of the Jewish Society for the Promotion of Fine Arts.
9. David Ginzburg (1857-1910), a connoisseur of oriental art, writer and public activist. During 1909-10 he headed St. Petersburg's Jewish community and the Society for the Distribution of Education among the Jews in Russia.
10. The Baron Stieglitz School of Technical Design is meant.
11. The School of Drawing attached to the Imperial Society for the Promotion of Fine Arts is meant. From 1906 to 1917 it was directed by Nikolai Roerich. On his visit to Leningrad in June 1973, Chagall wished to visit the house where the School was located. In an interview given shortly before leaving, he gave some details of this visit. "When in Leningrad, I wanted to find the building of the former Society for the Promotion of Fine Arts. There was such a Society before the revolution. At that time I was not accepted to the Academy of Art, probably because I painted knees poorly, but I was accepted to this Society. Well, we are travelling in a car through Leningrad, and I ask the driver to take me to Morskaya street. We arrive. I am looking, looking - and finally here is the familiar house. The sign says: "Artists' Union". I open the door and ask an old-aged woman, the door-keeper: "Madam, is it the place where the Society for the Promotion of Fine Arts was located long ago?". "Yes, comrade, this is the place, for sure," she replies with some kind of astonishment. Meanwhile I myself recognize the place - here is the familiar stair-case, bonjour, my stair-case! I stepped up, and I asked to make a photo of myself to keep it in my memory, since a great deal is connected with this building in my life" (Mar N. Marc Chagall: Mne ochen' zdes' ponravilos'... / Literaturnaya Gazeta, 1973, June 20).
12. On entering the School, Chagall skipped two years and enrolled straightaway in the third-year class; thus he became a student with a scholarship. In April 1907 he was marked and praised in a School report, and awarded a scholarship of six rubles; from September 1 1907 to September 1 1908 he received a monthly scholarship of 15 rubles.
13. The Zvantseva School of Drawing and Painting is meant, at that time existing under the name of the "Bakst and Dobuzhinsky School of Painting", known also as the "Bakst School (Academy)".
14. In May 1914 Chagall signed a contract with the Parisian gallerist and art entrepreneur Charles Malpel, according to which Malpel was to make a monthly payment equal to 250 francs, and Chagall passed him the rights to his new small-sized works. The payment was made only once, in the middle of May.
15. In March 1914 Chagall came to Berlin from Paris to attend the opening of his first big one-man exhibition at Herwarth Walden's gallery "Der Sturm". On June 15 he left Berlin for Vitebsk to attend his sister Zina's wedding.
16. Chagall means his works which were left in Berlin with Herwarth Walden, as well as three big-size paintings ("The Fiddler", "Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers", and "Maternity" - all painted in 1912 and 1913), exhibited in 1914 at the Salon des Independents in Paris, and transferred later to Amsterdam, where these works were acquired by the art collector Renault.
17. The paintings and drawings which made up his "Vitebsk Series" (19141915) are meant.
18. Paintings and drawings from the "Vitebsk Series" were first displayed at the "Year of 1915" exhibition, and then at the "Knave of Diamonds" exhibition in 1916.
19. Chagall initiated the opening of the People's School of Arts in Vitebsk in June 1919. In April, after Dobuzhinsky's departure, Chagall took over the duties of director. In addition, he ran a "Free Painting Studio".
20. On July 25 1915 Chagall and Bella Rosenfeld were married. On May 18 1916 their daughter Ida was born.
21. The second dimension is given incorrectly: the height is four "arshins" (71.12 cm); the correct size is 284 x 787 cm.

A Brief Address at the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow June 5 1973

I am grateful to you for your invitation to visit my motherland after fifty years of living abroad, and to visit the Tretyakov Gallery in which some of my pictures are exhibited; you cannot see my eyes filled with tears. Well, it may seem very strange, but having been very far from my motherland, I - in my soul - remained connected to her, and to the motherland of my predecessors.

I was always here [with my motherland] in my soul.

I was like a tree from my motherland growing in the air But nevertheless I had been growing ... In the end there is an eternal problem of the colour or of “a chemical process”, as I often would say...

As well as far-away Asia or Africa, artists from Europe and America were eager to come to Rome, or later to Paris.

When I was a boy I think there was some kind of colour in my soul, which dreamed of some special blue tone, and my instinct was driving me to some place where this colour was created. And as some time ago the Russian artists Brullov and Ivanov went to Rome, some young contemporary artists went to Paris.

I will not touch upon these delicate matters right now.

Anything can be said about me - whether I am a great artist or whether I am not great - but in my colours I remained devoted to my parents from Vitebsk - and what the colour is, that is the question.

Colour is blood for the body, like poetry for the poet.

Everybody knows what love is like ... Colour in itself is this very love which sometimes gives birth to Mozart, Masaccio, Titian and Rembrandt - and I'd like to shake you all by the hand today. I enjoy talking about love, because I am crazy about a certain natural colour visible in the eyes of people and in pictures. Only you have to see it with special eyes - as if you had just been born.