Marc Chagall is remembered by most as a painter of dreams—a visionary who colored love, folklore, and mysticism into the language of modernism. But beyond the floating lovers and weightless villages lies another legacy: Chagall The Illustrator. Through etchings, aquatints, and lithographs, Chagall cultivated a parallel career as a printmaker and visual narrator. As the Galerie de Buci's 2025 exhibition brings fresh light to this often-overlooked aspect of his work, this article traces the story of Chagall the illustrator across five moments of his life.

Chagall was born in 1887 in Vitebsk, a small shtetl in the Russian Empire (now Belarus), into a large Hasidic Jewish family. The religious life of the shtetl—its music, rituals, and traditions—left an indelible mark on Chagall, who would later describe it as a place of both mystical beauty and harsh constraints. He grew up surrounded by oral storytelling, Hebrew teachings, and vivid religious imagery, absorbing visual patterns from synagogue murals and illustrated prayer books. This formative environment was set against a backdrop of growing political tension: the pogroms, anti-Jewish laws, and the 1905 Russian Revolution began to shake the very foundations of Jewish life in the Pale of Settlement. As a young man, Chagall sought both artistic education and personal freedom. Inspired by tales of the avant-garde and supported by a patron, he left for Paris in 1910. These early experiences would shape the emotional and symbolic language of his illustrations for the rest of his life.

When Chagall arrived to Paris, he encountered a city at the height of artistic experimentation. He lived in La Ruche, among with other artists such as Modigliani. However, actually Chagall was introduced to printmaking in Berlin in 1922, at the age of thirty-five. He would eventually complete one hundred twenty-three intaglios and woodcuts, more than eleven hundred lithographs, and thirty-eight illustrated books. He quickly mastered the techniques of drypoint, aquatint, and etching, often returning to personal and literary themes. In works like "La Naissance" (1926), he showed a rare ability to translate emotional and symbolic content into fine lines and dynamic forms. His prints from this period already blur the line between dream and narrative, offering pages that read as much as they are seen.

Chagall did not treat printmaking as a secondary practice. He devoted serious energy to mastering its techniques, collaborating with printers like Fernand Mourlot and Ambroise Vollard. His prints from the 1930s and 1940s exhibit meticulous attention to tone and texture. Each aquatint or lithograph was not just a reproduction but an original act of creation. His posters for exhibitions and his limited-edition prints—such as those made for Galerie Maeght—married commercial intention with poetic impulse. Chagall had a singular gift for elevating the role of illustration in the experience of literature. He didn’t merely depict scenes; he interpreted them, often working in close emotional dialogue with the text. His illustrations added depth and ambiguity, making the viewer reread the words through his images. These contributions reshape how we understand illustration—not as passive accompaniment but as a parallel form of authorship. Unlike many contemporaries, Chagall approached print not as reproduction but as translation: turning ideas from canvas to copper without losing their spiritual charge.

Two of Chagall’s most significant book projects were deeply personal: his autobiographical Mein Leben (My Life), and his illustrations for Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls. In Mein Leben, Chagall returned to the landscapes and figures of his youth, etching memory into metal. The line between text and image dissolves: cows fly, fiddlers play, and old Vitebsk reawakens. With Dead Souls (1923–1927), his first important commission as an illustrator, Chagall took on Gogol’s dark comedy with a blend of grotesque humor and tenderness. The project also marked the beginning of his collaboration with renowned French publisher Ambroise Vollard. His characters teeter between caricature and empathy, caught in a visual net of swirling lines and distortions. These works demonstrate not only Chagall’s technical skill, but his deep understanding of narrative tone.

Spirituality runs like a quiet river through Chagall’s printmaking, culminating in works like La Maternité and his ambitious Bible illustrations. La Maternité is one of his most lyrical etchings, part of a series of five created for Marcel Arland’s story Maternité—a narrative told in reverse, from the death of an illegitimate child back to the lovers’ first night. These etchings do more than depict; they reforge time, crafting a poetic reverse chronology where sorrow becomes the rhythm of form. Using drypoint on copper, Chagall sketches scenes of public shame, a dead newborn, and a solitary mother giving birth amid chickens and empty crates. In contrast, his illustrations for the Bible (1930–1956), commissioned by Ambroise Vollard, represent one of the 20th century’s most sustained visual meditations on scripture. These etchings are neither doctrinal nor didactic: they are visionary, turning familiar tales into Chagallian parables of light, exile, and transcendence. For Chagall, illustration was not a supplement to text but a revelation of its soul.

Marc Chagall’s work as an illustrator reveals an artist who saw no boundaries between word and image. Whether working with Gogol, scripture, or his own memories, he created visual texts that live and breathe alongside their written counterparts. As the Galerie de Buci revisits this dimension of his oeuvre, we are reminded that Chagall was not just a painter of dreams but a writer of them, etching stories into eternity with ink, acid, and light.