Marc Chagall
Wolf Prize Laureate in Art 1981
Marc Chagall
Award citation:
“The living greatest, original and poetic visionary among the pioneers of modern art, whose glowing colours and human warmth have both a deep personal meaning and universal appeal”.
Prize share:
Marc Chagall
Antoni Tàpies
Marc Chagall (born in 1887, USSR) Is unquestionably the most original and most human and poetic visionery among the pioneers of modern art and one of the greatest painters of all time. For the first decade of the 20th century to our own time, the source of Chagall’s creative genius has not stopped flowing.
The range of chagall’s work is enormous, besides easle paintings, he made numerous graphic works, book illustrations, sketches, he created designs for the stage and ballet, stained glass windows, mosaics, tapestries etc.
Among his [ublic works of particular importance during these last years: stained glass windows at the Metz Cathedral (1960) and afterwards, at the synagogue of the Haddasah hospital in Jerusalem (1962), a painting at the ceiling of the paris opera (1964), mural paintings at the Metropolitan Opera in New York (1966), mosaics and 3 large gobelins at the Knesset building in Jerusalem (1964-1969), stained glass windows at the Frauminster in Zurich, and so forth.
The poetic vision and the human worth radiating from Chagall’s glowing colours and from his images have no doubt strong relationship to the Jewish spirit and tradition. His figures and landscapes stem from recollections of the Jewish village, which continuously reappear in his work. However, the greatness of Chagall’s vision lies in that it breaks through these limits. Chagall’s art has become the common spiritual property of our time.
