1914, Marc Chagall, The Smolensk Newspaper -- Philadelphia Museum of Art
From the museum label: In the summer of 1914, Chagall returned to his family in Vitebsk for what he thought would be a short visit. Then, in August, World War I broke out. This picture marks that moment. A young man in modern European attire with a bowler hat, a fashionable mustache, and short hair, sits across a table from an older man in traditional Jewish peasant clothing. They react to the headline “Voina” (meaning War) on a copy of the Smolensk Herald, a newspaper from a city in western Russia. Chagall would remain in Russia through events that changed the country’s history, including World War I, the 1917 Communist Revolution, and its immediate aftermath.
1914, Marc Chagall, The Smolensk Newspaper -- Philadelphia Museum of Art
From the museum label: In the summer of 1914, Chagall returned to his family in Vitebsk for what he thought would be a short visit. Then, in August, World War I broke out. This picture marks that moment. A young man in modern European attire with a bowler hat, a fashionable mustache, and short hair, sits across a table from an older man in traditional Jewish peasant clothing. They react to the headline “Voina” (meaning War) on a copy of the Smolensk Herald, a newspaper from a city in western Russia. Chagall would remain in Russia through events that changed the country’s history, including World War I, the 1917 Communist Revolution, and its immediate aftermath.