Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall (July 7, 1887 – March 28, 1985) was a Jewish Belarusian painter. Among the celebrated painters of the 20th century, he is often associated with the Surrealist movement.

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 Hanukkah-candlestick, and therefore the life of pious Jews (Chassidim).
• Windows: Chagall's Love of Freedom.
• Houses of Vitebsk (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.