Marc ChagallLa Poule

Marc Chagall (born Moishe Shagal) was an early Jewish-French Modernist artist who was associated with several major artistic styles and created works in a wide range of artistic formats, including paintings, drawings, book illustrations, stained glass, theater sets, ceramics, tapestries, and art prints.

He had two fundamental reputations, Lewis writes: as a pioneer of modernism and as a major Jewish artist. He experienced the "golden age" of modernism in Paris, where "he synthesized the art forms of Cubism, Symbolism and Fauvism, and the influence of Fauvism gave rise to Surrealism." Yet throughout these phases of his style, "he remained a Jewish artist, whose work was one long reverie about life in his native Vitebsk." "When Matisse dies," remarked Pablo Picasso in the 1950s, "Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what color really is.