Artists of the School of Paris from Belarus

Thus, they came back a century later, these Belarusian emigrants – artists who left Belarusian mestechkos and towns for Paris, a city of artistic freedom, for school and a better life still before the Revolution. They came back to the Motherland in their paintings created in 1920–1960-s.

All these young paintings (when they left, they were a bit over 20) who have graduated from art schools of lower level in their Motherland – in Minsk, Wilno or Odessa – left for Paris to get fame and at first they became languageless grains of sand in the million-strong Paris, a small part among 40 thousand foreign painters and sculptors who worked then in Paris. What perseverance, diligence, talent, vital power, life energy and belief in the self they needed not only to survive in the most beautiful city of the world, but also to make their way to have exhibitions in Paris galleries among numerous competitors and to have a chance to be noticed by art dealers.

86 artists from this multi-languages camp made up the so called “School of Paris” (the term of the art critic André Warnod), a cosmopolitan constellation of independent individualities who settled in Montparnasse. A third of the School of Paris, its most talented representatives were born in Belarus. They lived in the famous community of artists “La Ruche” in Montparnasse, lead a beggarly life, heroically survived the period of poverty and non-recognition, the first and the second world wars, but achieved fame after all. Scores of monographs are now written about them; albums are published; their works belong to the most famous museums of Europe, in majority – in France and the US. Some of them died young, some of them came back to the Motherland to die, but the majority of them lived to be very old in France, in their own houses on the Côte d'Azur or in Paris. It was possible to meet many of them still in 1980-s – the years of perestroika and open borders.

11 Belarus-born artists of the School of Paris made up the basis of the School of Paris, became a part of European history. These are world-famous artists Marc Chagall, Chaïm Soutine and Ossip Zadkine, well-known in Europe Pinchus Krémègne from Zheludok, Michel Kikoïne from Gomel, Ossip Lubitch from Grodno, Faibich-Schraga Zarfin from Smilovichy, Robert Genin from Klimovichy, Nadia Khodossievitch Léger from a village near Dokshytsy, Eugène Zak from Mogilno and Jacques Balgley from Brest.