Though Marc Chagall lived and worked in the 20th century, he was something of a Renaissance man, with no boundaries or constraints on the type of works he created. From stained glass, to paintings, to even creating stage sets for plays, he dabbled in many artistic movements, but ultimately was considered a modernist. He suffered a great deal of discrimination in his early years for being Jewish in Russia – despite that, his Jewish identity and themes of Judaism and folk tradition were central to a great deal of his works. He would split his time between France and Russia until World War 2, escaping France in 1941 as part of a program to extricate artists at risk of persecution by the Nazi regime. Following the war, he returned to France, but was deeply changed both by the war and by the death of his wife. He would continue to create some of the world’s most prominent artworks, including painting the ceiling of the Paris Opera, and designing stained glass windows for the United Nations. When he died in 1985, he was still working, and was described as ‘the last surviving master of European modernism’ by writer Serena Davies in the UK Daily Telegraph.
