Chagall, born Moishe Segal, was a Belarusian Jew who had fled Vitebsk for Paris a half-century earlier, at age 20. He was trying to leave behind Russia’s discrimination against Jews and the periodic violent pogroms, trading them for the center of the art world. “It was as if I was discovering light, color, freedom, the sun, pleasure in life for the first time,” he said of his early days in Paris. Even though Chagall immediately became one of the leading modernist painters, he continued to face difficulties in the French capital. When the Vichy government came to power in 1940, Jewish artists could no longer exhibit in Paris.

Source: International New York Times October 05, 2019 09:00 UTC