Marc CHAGALL

"I realised then that I had to go to Paris. The soil that had nourished the roots of my art was Vitebsk; but my art needed Paris as much as a tree needs water. I had no other reason to leave my homeland, and I believed that I had always remained true to it in my painting."

"My paintings are 'constructions psychiques'. I try to transfer layers of psychological reality to the canvas and deposit them there."

"In Paris, I went neither to the art academy nor to professors. The city itself was my teacher at every turn, in everything. The market traders, the waiters, the hotel porters, the farmers, the workers. It was surrounded by an astonishing atmosphere of enlightened freedom ("lumière-liberté") that I had not found anywhere else."

"While an offended model sobbed in the Russian studios, songs and guitars rang out in the Italian studios and discussions took place in the Jewish studios, I was all alone in my studio, in front of my paraffin lamp. Two, three o'clock in the morning. The sky is blue. The dawn is rising. Somewhere further away, the cattle were being slaughtered, the cows were bellowing and I was painting them."

Quotes from Marc Chagall