Marc Chagall, born Moishe Segal on July 7, 1887, in Vitebsk, Belarus (then part of the Russian Empire), was a renowned artist known for his unique blend of Cubism, Fauvism, and Surrealism. Raised in a Jewish family, he integrated elements of his cultural heritage into his art, depicting scenes from his childhood with dreamlike imagery, floating figures, and vibrant colors. After studying art in Saint Petersburg, he moved to Paris in 1910, immersing himself in the avant-garde art scene.

Chagall’s work often incorporated Russian folk art and Jewish traditions, featuring motifs like fiddlers, rabbis, and village life. He married Bella Rosenfeld and fled the Russian Revolution, settling in France, where he continued to develop his style. His art spanned various mediums, including painting, printmaking, stained glass, and ceramics.

Commissioned to create murals and stained glass windows for public buildings and churches, Chagall’s iconic windows at the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem exemplify his use of vibrant colors and symbolic imagery.

Throughout his career, Chagall’s work evolved, reflecting his experiences, travels, and changing artistic influences. He experimented with different techniques while maintaining his distinctive fantasy and symbolism. His legacy endures as one of the most celebrated artists of the 20th century, his contributions to modern art immortalizing him as a master of color, symbolism, and imagination. Marc Chagall passed away on March 28, 1985, leaving behind an enduring legacy that continues to captivate audiences worldwide.

Marc Chagall Quotes

1. “If all life moves inevitably towards its end, then we must, during our own, colour it with our colours of love and hope.”
— Marc Chagall

2. “Work isn’t to make money; you work to justify life.”
— Marc Chagall

3. “Art must be an expression of love or it is nothing.”
— Marc Chagall

4. “If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.”
— Marc Chagall

5. “Art seems to me to be above all a state of soul.”
— Marc Chagall

6. “In the arts, as in life, everything is possible provided it is based on love.”
— Marc Chagall

7. “Time is a river without banks.”
— Marc Chagall

8. “Color is all. When color is right, form is right. Color is everything, color is vibration like music; everything is vibration.”
— Marc Chagall

9. “All our interior world is reality, and that, perhaps, more so than our apparent world.”
— Marc Chagall

10. “Mozart never composed anything, ever! He copied what was written on his soul.”
— Marc Chagall

11. “If I create with my heart almost all my intentions remain. If it is with the head – almost nothing. An artist must not fear to be himself, to express only himself. If he is absolutely and entirely sincere, what he says and does will be acceptable to others.”
— Marc Chagall

12. “I adore the theater and I am a painter. I think the two are made for a marriage of love. I will give all my soul to prove this once more.”
— Marc Chagall

13. “The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world. In this long vigil he often has to vary his methods of stimulation; but in this long vigil he is also himself striving against a continual tendency to sleep.”
— Marc Chagall

14. “Mine alone is the country of my soul.”
— Marc Chagall

15. “If I weren’t a Jew then I wouldn’t be an artist, or at least not the one I am now.”
— Marc Chagall

16. “Despite all the troubles of our world, in my heart I have never given up on the love in which I was brought up or on man’s hope in love. In life, just as on the artist’s palette, there is but one single colour that gives meaning to life and art–the colour of love.”
— Marc Chagall

17. “For me a stained glass window is a transparent partition between my heart and the heart of the world.”
— Marc Chagall

18. “The freer the soul, the more abstract painting becomes.”
— Marc Chagall

19. “Only love interests me, and I am only in contact with things that revolve around love.”
— Marc Chagall

20. “Art is foremost a state of mind, and only secondarily a problem of form.”
— Marc Chagall

21. “I am a little Jew of Vitebsk. All that I paint, all that I do, all that I am, is just the little Jew of Vitebsk.”
— Marc Chagall

22. “Great art picks up where nature ends.”
— Marc Chagall

23. “The stars were my best friends. The air was full of legends and phantoms, full of mythical and fairy tale creatures, which suddenly flew away over the roof, so that one was at one with the firmament.”
— Marc Chagall

24. “Everything in art must spring from the movement of our whole life-stream, of our whole being – including the unconscious.”
— Marc Chagall

25. “On cannot be precise, and still be true.”
— Marc Chagall

26. “Art seems to me to be above all a state of soul. All souls are sacred, the soul of all the bipeds in every quarter of the globe.”
— Marc Chagall

27. “The habit of ignoring Nature is deeply implanted in our times. This attitude reminds me of people who never look you in the eye; I find them disturbing and always have to look away.”
— Marc Chagall

28. “In our life there is a single color, as on an artist’s palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love.”
— Marc Chagall

29. “My name is Marc, my emotional life is sensitive and my purse is empty, but they say I have talent.”
— Marc Chagall

30. “Love and fantasy, go hand in hand.”
— Marc Chagall

31. “The fingers must be educated, the thumb is born knowing.”
— Marc Chagall

32. “You could wonder for hours what flowers mean, but for me, they’re life itself, in all its happy brilliance. We couldn’t do with out flowers. Flowers help you forget life’s tragedies.”
— Marc Chagall

33. “Will God or someone give me the power to breathe my sigh into my canvases, the sigh of prayer and sadness, the prayer of salvation, of rebirth?”
— Marc Chagall

34. “I am a child who is getting on.”
— Marc Chagall

35. “To call everything that appears illogical, fantasy, fairy tale, or chimera would be practically to admit not understanding nature.”
— Marc Chagall

36. “I work in whatever medium likes me at the moment.”
— Marc Chagall

37. “What counts is art. painting, a kind of painting that is quite different from what everyone makes it out to be. But what kind? Will God or someone else give me the strength to breathe the breath of prayer and mourning into my paintings, the breath of prayer for redemption and resurrection?”
— Marc Chagall

38. “One must always be careful not to let one’s work be covered with moss.”
— Marc Chagall

39. “When I am finishing a picture, I hold some God-made object up to it – a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand – as a final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there’s a clash between the two, it’s bad art.”
— Marc Chagall

40. “I am out to introduce a psychic shock into my painting, one that is always motivated by pictorial reasoning: that is to say, a fourth dimension.”
— Marc Chagall

41. “Her silence is mine.”
— Marc Chagall

42. “What a genius, that Picasso. It is a pity he doesn’t paint.”
— Marc Chagall

43. “If a symbol should be discovered in a painting of mine, it was not my intention. It is a result I did not seek. It is something that may be found afterwards, and which can be interpreted according to taste.”
— Marc Chagall

44. “But perhaps my art is the art of a lunatic, I thought, mere glittering quicksilver, a blue soul breaking in upon my pictures.”
— Marc Chagall

45. “One fine day as my mother was putting the bread in the oven, I went up to her and taking her by her flour-smeared elbow I said to her, Mama I want to be a painter.”
— Marc Chagall

46. “You cannot explain me with “isms.” They are very bad for an artist. What one must believe in is color.”
— Marc Chagall

47. “Neither Imperial Russia, nor the Russia of the Soviets needs me. They don’t understand me. I am a stranger to them. I’m certain Rembrandt loves me.”
— Marc Chagall

48. “I’ve always painted pictures in which human love floods my colors.”
— Marc Chagall

49. “Changes in societal structure and in art would possess more credibility if they had their origins in the soul and spirit. If people read the words of the prophets with closer attention, they would find the keys to life.”
— Marc Chagall

50. “All colors are the friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites.”
— Marc Chagall