Marc Chagall
Born Vitebsk (formerly Russian Empire, now Belarus), 1887; died Saint-Paul, France, 1985
White Crucifixion
INV-5942
Marc Chagall
Born Vitebsk (formerly Russian Empire, now Belarus), 1887; died Saint-Paul, France, 19851938
White Crucifixion
Marc Chagall Born Vitebsk (formerly Russian Empire, now Belarus), 1887; died Saint-Paul, France, 1985 →ModernismpaintingModern Art Highlights
Date
1938
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
154.6 × 140 cm (60 7/8 × 55 1/16 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Purchased with funds provided by Alfred S. Alschuler
White Crucifixion is the first in Marc Chagall’s series of compositions that feature Jesus as a Jewish martyr and dramatically call attention to the persecution and suffering of Jews in 1930s Germany at the hands of the National Socialist Party. Chagall stressed Jesus’s religious identity by depicting him and the biblical figures above him in traditional Jewish garments. The surrounding images show the devastation of pogroms, violent attacks against Jewish communities often organized or sanctioned by local governments. Combining the Crucifixion with contemporary events, Chagall’s painting links the martyred Jesus with the Jewish people being persecuted across Europe and implicitly compares the Nazis with Jesus’s tormentors.
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