Marc Chagall: Gallery 1

Fraumünster Church: The thin blue spire of Fraumünster is the most graceful of the church spires that characterise Zurich’s skyline. Overlooking the historic old square of Münsterhof, the former pig market, the church was founded in 853 and its convent inhabited by German noblewomen until the 13th century. Important architectural features include the Romanesque choir and the enormous elaborate organ, but its chief attractions are its five beautiful stained glass windows.

In 1967, Marc Chagall – then 80 – accepted the commission to make new stained glass for the five 10m-high choir windows. The stunning artistry of the windows completed by the 83-year-old Marc Chagall in 1970 makes them one of the highlights of Zürich.

Often-used Symbols in

Chagall's Works of Art

Cow: life par excellence: milk, meat, leather, horn, power.

Tree: another life symbol.

Cock: fertility, often painted together with lovers.

Bosom (often naked): eroticism and fertility of life (Chagall loved and respected women).

Fiddler: in Chagall's village Vitebsk the fiddler made music at crosspoints of life (birth, wedding, death).

Herring (often also painted as a flying fish): commemorates Chagall's father working in a fish factory

Pendulum Clock: time, and modest life (in the time of prosecution at the Loire River the pendulum seems being driven with force into the wooden box of the pendulum clack).

Candlestick: two candles symbolize the Shabbat or the Menora (candlestick with seven candles) or the Chanukka-candlestick, and therefore the life of pious Jews (Chassidim).

Windows: Chagall's Love of Freedom.

Houses of Vizebsk (often in paintings of his time in Paris): feelings for his homeland

Scenes of the Circus: Harmony of Man and Animal, which induces Creativity in Man.

Crucifixion of Jesus: the Holocaust, Jews being persecuted by the Nazis.

Chagall Quotes

"All colors are the friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites."

"I work in whatever medium likes me at the moment."

"In our life there is a single color, as on an artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love."

Chagall and his works today

Today, a Chagall painting can sell for more than $6 million. His work is in the Paris Opera, the First National Bank Plaza of downtown Chicago, Illinois, the Metropolitan Opera, the cathedral of Metz, France, Notre-Dame de Reims, the Fraumünster Cathedral in Zürich, Switzerland, and the Church of St. Stephan in Mainz, Germany.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Chagall