Press releases

3 Jan 2026

‘She stunned him with one phrase’: The love story of Marc Chagall and Bella Rosenfeld

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MINSK, 3 January (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 the relationship between Marc Chagall and Bella Rosenfeld, as well as the artist’s creative journey.

Speaking about Marc Chagall’s artistic career, Sofiya Macharashvili noted: “Marc Chagall, Ossip Zadkine, the famous Kikoine, the famous Modigliani, and many, many more – they all went to Paris. The book Artists of the School of Paris from Belarus describes all of this in great detail. It says that he [Chagall] had an unattainable understanding of love. This is also reflected in his book My Life and his love for the famous Bella Rosenfeld.”

The tour guide recounted Chagall’s description of painting Bella nude before their marriage: “It’s a unique story. He describes how he undressed her in the dark to paint her body. She allowed this because she was already considered his fiancée. And these were Jewish families, very conservative ones. The lights were out, but light shone through the window, and he saw her breasts, her hips,” said Sofiya Macharashvili. “He quietly admired her, didn’t even try to kiss her, he was so afraid to approach this magic, the way he describes his beloved Bella. This is also Chagall; this is his love, this is his freedom.”

Blogger Dmitry Sivchik shared Chagall’s recollection of his mother’s reaction to the painting: “I made a sketch and hung it on the wall. The next day, my mother comes to me: ‘What is this?’ A naked woman, breasts, dark spots. I’m ashamed. She is too. ‘Take this girl away,’ she says. ‘Mommy, I love you very much, but have you never seen yourself naked? And I just look and draw, that’s all.’ But I listened to my mother; I took down that canvas and painted another one, a procession.”

Sofiya Macharashvili added that for a long time, Chagall didn’t fully grasp the gift he had received in Bella, who came from a fairly wealthy family. “She stunned him with one phrase: ‘When your eyes look at me, I don’t know how to breathe.’ She was so shy around him, so afraid of him as a man. In that moment, you can already sense the thought that he would be a great artist,” the guide noted. “Nobody knew him. He opened an art school in Vitebsk. In 1922, he left Vitebsk altogether. He spent some time in St. Petersburg, then he moved Paris. So many worries. But the wedding took place,” she added.

Blogger Dmitry Sivchik recalled that Marc Chagall had three significant relationships in his life. After Bella’s death in 1944, he was in a relationship with Virginia Haggard, a British artist, photographer, and memoirist, who was his common-law wife. His second legal wife was Valentina (Vava) Brodskaya. “A creative person may have more than one ‘love’ in their lifetime; being a creative person, they see the world and relationships between men and women differently,” noted Sofiya Macharashvili.