Today you may notice that everybody at Rotherhithe Primary School is wearing purple. Well, this Sunday is Wear it Purple Day where everyone across the UK is asked to show their support in raising awareness of Epilepsy around the world by wearing something purple. You can find out more about this event and how you can help support this campaign by visiting https://www.epilepsy.org.uk/.
Purple Art:
As well as wearing purple today, our classes are creating some amazing art using different variations of the colour purple. This style of art is inspired by the works of the artist Marc Chagall.
About Marc Chagall:
Artist Marc Chagall was born into a Jewish family in the town of Vitebsk, Russia (now in Belarus) on 7 July 1887. He attended a traditional Jewish school and a Russian high school, moving to St Petersburg in 1907, where he studied at the Imperial School for the Protection of the Fine Arts, and later at the Zvantseva School, led by Léon Bakst. In 1910, Chagall arrived in Paris, where he enrolled at the Académie de La Palette and settled at La Ruche (the Beehive) studios in Montparnasse, mixing with other Jewish immigrant artists, subsequently known as the Ecole de Paris juifs, including Modigliani and Chaïm Soutine, as well as key figures in French modernism, among them Guillaume Apollinaire and Robert Delaunay.
Chagall frequently used animals for symbolic purposes in his dream-like paintings that brought together aspects of French tradition with Russian folklore and Jewish motifs. His first solo exhibition took place at Der Sturm Gallery in Berlin, in 1914 and he returned to Russia to visit his family the same year. During his visit, the outbreak of the First World War prevented his return to Paris and following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, he was appointed Fine Arts Commissar for the province of Vitebsk. In 1922 he left again for Berlin, where his work was published by the periodical Der Sturm.
Gallery:
Below is a gallery of our purple art collection. For a larger view, please click on the thumbnails below. We hope that you enjoy them.