parís pio artista, “se concentra la bohemia cultural de la ciudad”, y conocerá a Blaise Cendrars, Sonia, Robert Delaunay y al poeta Guillaume Apollinaire, que pronto se convirtió en su mentor y le ayudó a triunfar por su forma de experimentar, mezclando los colores, las formas abstractas y geométricas con el movi- miento y sus propias ensoñaciones. El estallido de la Primera Guerra Mundial le sorprendió en un viaje de retorno a Vistebsk donde se vio obligado con- finarse durante ocho años. Es una fase de autobúsqueda que se refleja en la creación de autorretratos inquietantes y repre- sentaciones de su familia. Pero volvió a París en los años treinta, ya casado e inmerso en la vida artística, donde se convirtió en habitual de la brasse- rie La Coupole que frecuentaban Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre, Édith Piaf o Picasso. Fue entonces cuando nació su amistad con el novelista André Malraux, aunque su colaboración más célebre no se materializaría hasta 1964, cuando Malraux , ministro de Cultura del gobierno de De Gaulle, le encomendó la tarea de pintar los frescos de la cúpula de la Ópera Garnier de París, su obra magna. Allí inmortalizó a 14 músicos como Mozart, Wagner, Ravel o Debussy que danzan entre ángeles y ciudades soñadas. Fue su forma de decir al mundo que el arte, como la música y como los sueños, no deben anclarse en la tierra sino que su destino es volar muy alto. ENG There are artists who succeed because they are enig- matic. Artists who, instead of painting what they see, reflect their dreams in their work. Marc Chagall (1887-1985), born in Vitebsk, a corner of Belarus, was one of them. He turned his life into a recreation of floating images full of colour where love and memories of his childhood mingle with scenes from Paris, the city that elevated him to fame. “I don’t want to be like the others; I want to see a new world,” he said. This is the reason why he experimented with Cubism, Expressionism, Symbolism, and Surrealism, but never submitted to them. Chagall was a perpetual exile. From Vitebsk to Paris, then to New York, he ended up on the French Riviera, which he never left. Paris was the cradle of his creativity in two different periods. Born into a poor family of nine children, Marc Chagall fell in love with his muse, the writer Bella Rosenfeld, in his native village in 1909. The bride’s powerful father pre- vented their marriage until the poor young painter was able to demonstrate a brilliant artistic career. Two years later, in 1911, Chagall moved to Paris where he discovered the avant-garde, worked for a few months in a studio in Montparnasse, but soon moved to La Ruche, an artists’ resi- dence at 2 Passage Dantzig, which is still open today. There, in the artist’s own words, “the cultural bohemia of the city is concentrated,” and he met Blaise Cendrars, Sonia, Robert Delaunay, and the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, who soon became his mentor and helped him succeed through his experimentation, mixing colours, abstract and geometric forms with movement and his own dreams. The outbreak of World War I caught him by surprise on a return trip to Vitebsk, and he was forced to remain in confinement there for eight years. But he returned to Paris in the 1930s, now married and immersed in artistic life, becoming a regular at the La Coupole brasserie frequented by Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre, Édith Piaf, and Picasso. It was then that his friendship with the novelist André Malraux was born, although their most famous collaboration would not materialise until 1964, when Malraux, Minister of Culture in De Gaulle’s government, com- missioned him to paint the fresco in the dome of the Opéra Garnier in Paris, his magnum opus. There he immortalised 14 musicians including Mozart, Wagner, Ravel, and Debussy dancing among angels and dream cities. It was his way of telling the world that art, like music and dreams, should not be anchored to the earth but rather destined to fly high. parís © Keystone-France /Gamma-Rapho En el centro junto al ministro André Malraux en la inauguración de la exposición de 1959 bajo su obra Au dessus de la ville. // In the centre next to Minister André Malraux at the opening of the 1959 exhibition beneath his work Au dessus de la ville. parís Vuelos // Flights: París es la ciudad del amor, pero también de la cultura y el arte. Conocerla aún más a fondo es posible gracias a los tres vuelos al día que programa Air Europa con Madrid, y las cuatro frecuencias semanales con Palma de Ma-llorca. // Paris is the city of love, but also of culture and art. You can get to know it even better thanks to Air Europa’s three daily flights from Madrid and four weekly flights from Palma de Mallorca. www.aireuropa.com