Paris, the artistic rebirth for Chagall

In 1910, the Russian and French artist Marc Chagall (1887-1985) left Russia for Paris: "I felt that, if I stayed in Vitebsk any longer, I should be covered with hair and moss», he wrote in his autobiography.

A year later, in La Ruche, he came into contact with the artistic community of the nearby quarter of Montparnasse and made friends with Guillaume Apollinaire (who would define his work "supernatural"), Robert Delaunay, Fernand Léger and Blaise Cendrars, the poet who, from that point on, would name all his French works.

"No academy could have given me all I discovered by getting my teeth into the exhibitions, the shop windows, and the museums of Paris», Chagall would later say, «my art needed Paris as much as a tree needs water".

- "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 (on his arrival in Paris in 1910)" - Marc Chagall My life, Marc Chagall, 1922; as quoted in Letters of the great artists - from Blake to Pollock - Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 261

«Nessuna accademia avrebbe potuto darmi tutto ciò che ho scoperto curiosando tra le mostre, le vetrine e i musei di Parigi», avrebbe affermato Chagall, «la mia arte aveva bisogno di Parigi tanto quanto un albero ha bisogno dell'acqua».