Chagall was born into a tradition-steeped Russian household, which inspired in him a love of Russian-Jewish folktales and a deep reverence for the Jewish religion. From these elements he created the fantastical, personal paintings that relate a sense of fairytale atemporality -- in short, a poetic
Henri Matisse made it look easy, but don't be fooled -- those vibrant, lyrical scenes and simple, geometric portraits which look tossed off the tip of his paintbrush actually took weeks, sometimes months to create. A perfectionist, he once mused, "Instinct must be thwarted just as one prunes the bran