Chagall, Marc (1887-1985)
Moi et le village (I and the Village)
1911
Oil on canvas, 192.1 x 151.4 cm
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Chagall grew up in a Hasidic Jewish community in what is today Belarus. I and the Village, painted the year after he moved to Paris, evokes his memories of the place. He shows people and animals living side by side, their mutual dependence signified by the lines connecting the eyes of peasant and cow. The artist recalled of his childhood, “Lines, angles, triangles, squares carried me far away to enchanting horizons.” The vibrant colors and loose geometries Chagall used to render the scene nostalgic and magical signal his awareness, among other things, of the new fractured and fragmented visual language of Cubism, which he encountered in Paris. (MoMA)