Handwritten New Year's card signed by the artist Marc Chagall and his second wife, Valentina Brodskaya (Vava)

Chagall Mark Zakharovich (Khatskelevich) (1887-1985), artist. He was born on July 7, 1887 in the town of Peskovatiki near Vitebsk (Belarus) in the family of a loader of a fish shop, where, besides Mark, there were eight other children. He received a traditional religious education at home. At the end of 1906, he came to St. Petersburg; here L. S. Bakst, M. V. Dobuzhinsky, N. K. Roerich became his mentors. In 1910-1914 he lived in Paris; in the colony of artists "Beehive" he became close to the avant—gardists, in particular with the poet G. Apollinaire and the artist R. Delaunay. Chagall's early paintings are dominated by themes of childhood, family, death, deeply personal and at the same time eternal motives ("Saturday", 1910).

Over time, the theme of passionate love comes to the fore ("Over the City", 1914-1918; "Gates of the Jewish Cemetery", 1917). Sharp deformations and unreal-fabulous color contrasts of canvases created by Chagall ("Me and the Village", 1911; "Self-portrait with Seven Fingers", 1911-1912), had a great influence on the development of surrealism. In Moscow, the artist made a number of large wall panels for the Jewish Chamber Theater (1920-1922). Since 1923, Chagall settled in Paris; in the same year, a book of his memoirs "My Life" was published in Berlin.

In 1933, the Nazis who came to power in Germany publicly burned the artist's paintings. In 1937, the artist took French citizenship. As he reaches the peak of fame, Chagall's manner becomes easier and more relaxed. Through the recurring themes of Vitebsk childhood and love, gloomy echoes of former and future world catastrophes float ("Time has No Shores", 1930— 1939). Since 1955, work began on the "Chagall Bible".

In line with this cycle, the master also created a large number of monumental sketches, compositions based on which decorated buildings of different religious denominations. These works, together with secular decorative compositions (murals of the ceiling of the Paris Opera, 1964, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, 1965, etc.) updated the language of monumental art.