In our life there is a single color, as on an artist’s palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love.
— Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall was born on this day in 1887 as Moishe Shagal, in a little town near Vitebsk in then Belarus, then part of the great Russian Empire. According to some art historians he was the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century - and indeed Vitebsk was at that time called “Russian Toledo” having more than half Jewish population. Indeed, Jewish and Judaism-inspired themes will remain in Chagall’s art; another important thing was that he was not able to attend school or university at that time in Russia as a Jew, so his primary education was in Jewish religious school, until his mother took the chance and bribed the headmaster of a local high school :))

He decided he wanted to be an artist after he saw a schoolmate draw; later he remembered this as having a revelation in the sense that he never really saw any art at all, having none at home. This starting point has led Marc to become on of the most important artists of the 20th century. He moved to  St. Petersburg, became the pupil of Léon Bakst and in the end moved to Paris, where his course was set for stardom. 

Read more about him
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Chagall