Among many he is also known for the glorious big projects of his later years: two stunning murals at the Metropolitan Opera; the stained-glass window "Peace" at the United Nations; the stunning ceiling he designed for the Paris Opera; his 12 stained-glass windows for the Hebrew University in Jerusalem; and for windows at churches in France, his adopted country.
Although his work and persona may have been unique, we learn a great deal about the influences that shaped him from this first full-scale biography, "Chagall," by Jackie Wullschlager, the chief art critic for the Financial Times. When Chagall was asked in the 1960s about the most essential influences on his painting, he specified the mysticism of Hasidic Judaism, the will to construct, and the mystique of Russian icons. We learn that he was more responsive to writers than artists, though Gauguin's primitivism clearly had considerable impact, as did Cubism during his first stay in Paris (1911-14), and then Rembrandt, especially when Chagall became intrigued with etching projects. Mystical and highly spiritual artists like El Greco also had notable appeal.
Chagall painted numerous self-portraits but created many more works inspired by his first wife and beloved soul mate, Bella Rosenfeld, immortalized as the lithe and lovely spectral figure whose hand he holds or whom he locks in a firm embrace.
Although Chagall's style remained astonishingly consistent, it passed through substantive phases, ranging from the fantasy-land village motifs of life and death to more nostalgic themes during the 1930s, when his exile from Bolshevik Russia saddened him, and then Bella's death in 1944, which crippled him emotionally for six months, and finally to the promptings of memory in his later years, when he became famous and wealthy, living on the French Riviera with his second wife, and Picasso and Matisse his neighbors.
