My Life.

CHAGALL, Marc.

$1,500.00

Item Number: 146789

New York: The Orion Press, 1960.

First edition in English of artist Marc Chagall’s early autobiography. Oblong octavo, original cloth, illustrated with twenty drawings by the author. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the title page, “For Lillian Friedman Marc Chagall 1960.” Near fine in a very good dust jacket. Translated by Elizabeth Abbott

Art critic Robert Hughes referred to Chagall as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century" (though Chagall saw his work as "not the dream of one people but of all humanity"). According to art historian Michael J. Lewis, Chagall was considered to be "the last survivor of the first generation of European modernists." In his early autobiography, 'My Life,' he presents a full picture of village life in Russia into his time in Paris in the years immediately before the First World War.