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Against his family’s will: What did Marc Chagall’s father want him to be?

An archive photo

MINSK, 31 December (BelTA) – In a new episode of the On Point. The Nation’s Pride project on BelTA’s YouTube channel, guide Sofiya Macharashvili and blogger Dmitry Sivchik (Dim Dimych) talked about Marc Chagall’s life and the obstacles he had to overcome on his way to become an artist.

Reflecting on the life and work of Marc Chagall, who was born into a Jewish family in Liozno near Vitebsk, Sofiya Macharashvili noted: “To talk about his works, all so deep and sensual, you need to know his childhood, how he failed to enter an art school. He was admitted years later in St. Petersburg, straight to the third year, after just one exam. To truly grasp why he is seen as a world artist, one must know his entire complex life story.”

“He had a very difficult childhood. And in his early adulthood, there were also so many problems: his Jewish heritage, the outbreak of one war, then another, forcing him to flee, to escape solely because he was a Jew,” Sofiya Macharashvili added.

The guide noted that the family was against Marc Chagall becoming an artist. “A clerk, an accountant, a decent photographer at worst,” Sofiya Macharashvili cited the professions suggested by Marc Chagall’s father for him.

Blogger Dmitry Sivchik (Dim Dimych) emphasized: “At such defining moments, when faced with the denial of his calling as an artist, he had to forge his own path through a conscious choice. His whole personality, I believe, was shaped in childhood and youth. And, undoubtedly, it influenced his future works.”

Sofiya Macharashvili noted that only one person supported Marc Chagall’s desire to study painting. “Only his grandfather told him to go to St. Petersburg to see Bakst. As for Léon Bakst, the famous theatre artist, everyone was against him pursuing art as well. Yet, in the end, all of Paris mourned him. Marc received no such support either. The options were clear: a decent photographer, a clerk, an accountant – anything but art school. Yet, hour by hour, day by day, year by year, he persistently honed his craft. What distinguishes him from many artists of the world is his inner freedom, his vision of people, nature, animals, relationships between people, for example, between a man and a woman. He understood all this, and could not be confined or constrained by oppressive limitations,” Sofiya Macharashvili concluded.

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