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Article: Chagall's Belated Homecoming; Belarus Birthplace Finally Returns His Love
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- July 17, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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All these years I never stopped having doubts: Do you
understand me, my city? Do we understand each other? I kissed you
with all my paint and brush strokes. And don't tell me now you don't
recognize yourself.
- "To My City," a poem-in-prose
by Marc Chagall (1944)
One day in 1962, an extraordinary letter arrived at the Vitebsk
museum for culture and history, a pretty pink building that was left
standing, miraculously, after the city was pulverized in World War
II.
The letter was from a Soviet scholar in France who had been in
touch with Marc Chagall, the renowned modernist painter then in his
mid-seventies. This alone was unusual. Chagall, who had left his
home town of Vitebsk as a ...