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War

Marc Chagall • Painting, 1966, 163×231 cm
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About the artwork
This artwork was added since it is referred to in the materials below
Art form: Painting
Subject and objects: Genre scene, Allegorical scene
Technique: Oil
Materials: Canvas
Date of creation: 1966
Size: 163×231 cm
Artwork in selections: 18 selections
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Description of the artwork «War»

The painting "War" Marc Chagall wrote in the period from 1964 to 1966, already in peacetime. Despite the fact that 20 years have passed since the great tragedy of World War II, its echoes no, no, yes, arose in the artist's work. But the Chagalls left for the States on one of the last steamers! Chagall did not want to emigrate to the last, although the Nazis occupied one European state after another. The war was getting closer and closer to the town of Gordes in Provence, where the family moved in an attempt to distance themselves from what was happening in France. After the anti-Jewish laws of the Vichy government in October 1940, Chagall understood: the tragedy was near, he had to leave.

We managed to get visas thanks to numerous friends. In Marseille, Chagall was tried to be detained "as a person who looked like a Jew" - fortunately, he was pulled out of the clutches of the police. The Chagalls left for Lisbon, where they boarded a steamer, and they were lucky once again - they managed to drag the load of Mark's paintings and drawings past the greedy paws of the German embassy in Spain. Chagall arrived in New York with caution, but as they say, fully armed.

Upon learning of the German attack on the Soviet Union, Chagall wrote a "Letter to my native Vitebsk." "... I did not live with you, but there was not a single painting of mine that did not reflect your joy and sorrow. The enemy did not have enough of the city in my paintings, which he hacked as best he could. His" doctors of philosophy "who wrote about me "Deep" words, now have come to you, my city, to throw my brothers from a high bridge into Dvina, shoot, burn, watch with crooked smiles in their monocles ... "And in 1944 another tragedy - his Bella passed away, his great love.

In the paintings of the Second World War, Chagall often painted fires. Years passed, but his heart still sank as he thought of the agony of the Jews who perished in the crucible of war. And then, on his canvases, bonfires again blazed, in which the life of small Jewish shtetl towns, charming townships scattered throughout Europe, where peaceful and pious people lived, disappeared into oblivion.
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