Top 10 Marc Chagall Quotes at QuotationFun

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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, fh) 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, fh) 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, (translation Daphne Woodward)

On his arrival in Paris in 1910 - My Life - 1922. Quoted in Letters of the Great Artists – from Blake to Pollock -translation Daphne Woodward.

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I am working in Paris. I cannot for a single day get the thought out of my head that there probably exists something essential, some immutable reality, and now that I have lost everything else (thank God, it gets lost all on its own) I am trying to preserve this and, what is more, not to be content. In a word: I am working.

Letter to A. N. Benois, 1911. Quoted in Marc Chagall - the Russian years 1906 – 1922.

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The sun has only ever shone for me in France. I have got used to beating the streets of Paris, happy beyond words dreaming of a life 125 years long - with the Louvre radiant in the distance. Having ended up in the Russian provinces, I have decided to die.

Letter to Sergei K. Markovsky, 1915 - The Russian Years 1906 – 1922, editor Christoph Vitali.

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The Jews will always be grateful to it. What other great country has saved a million and a half Jews from Hitler's hands, and shared its last piece of bread? What country abolished antisemitism? What other country devoted at least a piece of land as an autonomous region for Jews who want to live there? All this, and more, weighs heavily on the scales of history.

Speaking of Russia - Speech - 1944

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In recent years I have felt unhappy that I couldn't be with you, my friends. My enemy forced me to take the road of exile. On that tragic road, I lost my wife, the companion of my life, the woman who was my inspiration. I want to say to my friends in France that she joins me in this greeting, she who loved France and French art so faithfully. Her last joy was the liberation of Paris. Now, when Paris is liberated, when the art of France is resurrected, the whole world too will, once and for all, be free of the satanic enemies who wanted to annihilate not just the body but also the soul - the soul, without which there is no life, no artistic creativity

To the Paris Artists - Letter published in a Paris weekly.

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Why? Why did I leave you many years ago? You thought, the boy seeks something, seeks such a special subtlety, that color descending like stars from the sky and landing, bright and transparent, like snow on our roofs. Where did he get it? How would it come to a boy like him? I don't know why he couldn't find it with us, in the city - in his homeland. Maybe the boy is "crazy", but "crazy" for the sake of art. You thought: "I can see, I am etched in the boy's heart, but he is still 'flying,' he is still striving to take off, he has 'wind' in his head." I did not live with you, but I didn't have one single painting that didn't breathe with your spirit and reflection.[

Letter - To My City Vitebsk.

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If Russian painters were condemned to become the pupils of the West they were, I think, rather unfaithful ones by their very nature. The best Russian realist conflicts with the realism of Courbet. The most authentic Russian Impressionism leaves one perplexed if one compares it with Monet and Pisarro. Here, in the Louvre, before the canvases of Manet, Millet and others, I understood why my alliance with Russia and Russian art did not take root. Why my language itself is foreign to them. Why people do not place confidence in me. Why the artistic circles fail to recognize me. Why in Russia I am entirely useless. In Paris, it seemed to me that I was discovering everything, above all a mastery of technique. It was not in technique alone that I sought the meaning of art then. It was as if the gods had stood before me. I had the impression that we are still only roaming on the surface of matter, that we are afraid to plunge into chaos, to shatter and overthrow beneath our feet the familiar surface. (on his arrival in Paris in 1910, fh)

My Life - 1922. Quoted in Letters of the Great Artists – from Blake to Pollock -translation Daphne Woodward.

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No academy could have given me all I discovered by getting my teeth into the exhibitions, the shop windows, and the museums of Paris. Beginning with the market – where, for lack of money, I bought only a piece of a long cucumber – the workman in his blue overall, the most ardent followers of Cubism, everything showed a definite feeling for proportion, clarity, an accurate sense of form, of a more painterly kind of painting, even in the canvases of second-rate artists.

Marc Chagall - the Russian Years 1906 – 1922

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Meanwhile, the enemy jokes, saying that we are a "stupid nation." He thought that when he started slaughtering the Jews, we would all in our grief suddenly raise the greatest prophetic scream, and would be joined by the Christian humanists. But, after two thousand years of "Christianity" in the world - say whatever you like - but, with few exceptions, their hearts are silent. I see the artists in Christian nations sit still - who has heard them speak up? They are not worried about themselves, and our Jewish life doesn't concern them.

Speech - 1944

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In response I am sending you some pictures which I painted in Paris out of homesickness for Russia. They are not very typical of me; I have selected the most modest ones for the Russian exhibition.

Letter to Mstislav V. Dobushinsky, A. N. Benois, 1912. Quoted in ‘arc Chagall - The Russian Years 1906 – 1922, editor Christoph Vitali.

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