Excerpt

If a painter is a Jew and paints life, how is he to keep Jewish elements out of his work! But if he is a good painter, his painting will contain a great deal more. The Jewish content will be there, of course, but his art will aim at universal relevance.
—Marc Chagall, 1933

Which of Marc Chagall's Works were Burned?

Monographs about Chagall

Who was Marc Chagall?

Artist Marc Chagall (1887–1985) was born to a Hasidic Jewish family in Vitebsk, Russia. Many of his works include broad, rich colors and imagery of Russian and Jewish provincial life. After Chagall and his family settled in Paris in 1923, his works gained popularity within Europe. However, Chagall's Jewish subject matter and non-realistic style made him an outcast to the Nazis, who burned monographs about his work during the book burnings of 1933. The Nazis also confiscated his works from various museums and displayed many of them in a "Degenerate Art" exhibition in Munich in 1937. Fearing persecution upon the Nazi invasion of France in 1940, Chagall fled with his family to New York. He returned to France in 1948.

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