Steeped in tradition yet alive with imagination, Chagall’s enormous body of work reflects a profound connection to cultural roots and to the boundless possibilities of creative expression. This monograph brings fresh eyes to the most relevant aspects of Chagall’s oeuvre. It traces how, over eight decades, Chagall responded to his contemporaries’ experimentations with cubism, fauvism, and surrealism by creating his own visual language.

It offers a lively examination of overarching themes—love and romance; Jewish tradition and history; spirituality and the daily life, based on memory and nostalgia—and the ways they are reflected through repetition and variation over the years. And it reveals how Chagall’s flexible use of symbols contributes to build a fantastic cosmos grounded on the “logic of the illogical”.

Readers will come to understand how Chagall was essentially a storyteller with an enormous gift for color and line, and a narrative artist who understood the power of symbolism in his own terms.