Stained Glass
“For me, a stained glass window is a transparent partition between my heart and the heart of the world,” Marc Chagall once said. “It is something elevating and exhilarating.”While Chagall is known for his iconic stained glass windows, the Belarusian artist only began working with the medium at age 70. Nonetheless, he is often credited with reinventing stained glass—applying his avant-garde sensibility to a medium with over 1,000 years of history. Featuring cubist forms, Chagall’s stained glass windows are often religious in theme, whether designed for synagogues in Israel or cathedrals in Europe. With their bright blue backgrounds, Chagall’s most celebrated glassworks include the windows at Reims Cathedral in France, the United Nations in New York City, and the Art Institute of Chicago. These large-scale works often took years of preparation and planning, leaving behind a variety of drawings and prints that reveal Chagall’s creative process.