Religious Art & Worldviews · Artists
The Jewish painter of Vitebsk who carried the shtetl, the Torah, and the crucified Jesus of Jewish suffering into modern art. Shown in a 1941 photograph; his paintings remain in copyright.
Tagged: Painting Modern Devotional Iconic Modernism Jewish
Chagall's imagery braided his Hasidic childhood, his wife Bella, and the Bible into floating villages of fiddlers, rabbis, and lovers. His White Crucifixion (1938) set a Jewish Jesus at the center of the pogroms — one of the century's defining religious images.
He also worked in the church's medium: the stained glass he made for cathedrals at Metz and Mainz and for the synagogue of the Hadassah medical center in Jerusalem makes him one of the few artists honored by both traditions in glass.
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