Marc Chagall Enter a
feeling, not
a gallery.
Choose a mood and the room itself answers — the light cools or warms, the air changes pace, and only the works that carry that feeling step forward from the dark. Everything else recedes into shadow.
Marc Chagall
Early Life, Family and Training Marc Chagall enters the world on July 7, 1887, in Vitebsk, Russian Empire, born Moishe Segal. He is the first of nine children in a modest Jewish family. Life is defined by the rhythms of labor and small-scale commerce. His father, Khatskel Segal, works as a herring pickler at a warehouse, while his mother, Feïga-Ita Tchernina, manages a small grocery store. These early years are rooted in the specific te
xtures of a provincial town, where the boundaries of his world are shaped by the needs of a large household and the traditions of his community. Education begins within the walls of the heder, a traditional Jewish elementary school. Here, the focus remains on religious instruction and the foundational texts of his upbringing. By age thirteen, the scope of his learning shifts toward the secular. He enters Vitebsk’s official middle scho…