Marc Chagall, The Jewish Renaissance and the Art of Painting

“The Jewish form is here, it is awakening, it is coming alive again!” – This is the conclusion of the programmatic essay “The Paths of Jewish Painting” by the young artists Issachar Ber Ryback and Boris Aronson which appeared in 1919 in Kiev. Marc Chagall was one of the main figures of this awakening. His playful art, which combines European and Russian avant-garde techniques with a Jewish imagery, is considered one of the most innovative expressions of modern Jewish art. The talk will survey the renaissance in Jewish art at the time of the Russian revolution, from Kiev to Vitebsk, and from Moscow to Paris. It will also discuss the place of Yiddish book illustration in Chagall development as a modern artist

Prof. Dr. Sabine Koller studied Slavic and Romance philology at the Universities of Regensburg, Grenoble and Saint Petersburg Theater Academy. She received her PhD from the University of Regensburg in 2002. Since 2013 she is professor of Slavic-Jewish Studies at the University of Regensburg, maintaining the first professorship of this kind in Germany. She is the author of Marc Chagall. Grenzgänge zwischen Literatur und Malerei (2012). Her current research focuses on the aesthetic evolution of Yiddish modernist poets (Dovid Hofshteyn) during the Soviet period.