Born in Vitbsk, Russia. While contemporary of prominent figures of the Constructivists in post-revolutionary Russia, his art followed a course quite different, he had a very personal and poetic visual language. Chagall was born in a Jewish family, and had a deep attachment to the his religion and traditional folktales. In 1910 he left for Paris and entered the circle of Apollinaire, Modigliani and Soutine. André Breton, the principal theorist of surrealism, later recognized the significance of Chagall’s “liberation of the object from the laws of weight and gravity”.