Published: 5 October 2018
Last updated: 5 March 2024
“In a little town in today’s Belarus, far away from Moscow and St. Petersburg, the history of art was written,” said Angela Lampe, curator of modern art for the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris.
The little town was Vitebsk, the location of Marc Chagall’s passion project, The People’s Art School.
It’s a little-known chapter that is finally getting its due in Chagall, Lissitzky, Malevich: The Russian Avant-Garde in Vitebsk, 1918-1922, at The Jewish Museum in Manhattan, Lampe said.
Aside from Chagall, the newly opened exhibit focuses on El Lissitzky and Kazimir Malevich, two leading exponents of the Russian avant-garde, whom Chagall invited to teach at the school. Together the trio developed a “Leftist Art” in step with the revolutionary emphasis on collectivism, education, and innovation.
Photo: Members of the Creative Committee of the People’s Art School, Vitebsk, winter 1919. Seated: Yuri (Yehuda) Pen (third from left), Marc Chagall (centre), Vera Ermolaeva (second from right), Kazimir Malevich (right) - Archives Marc et Ida Chagall, Paris
FULL STORY After the Russian Revolution, Chagall ran an art school for the proletariat (Times of Israel)
