Bella Chagall

The Remarkable Woman Behind Marc Chagall

In the afterword to Bella Chagall’s autobiographical book First Encounter, the famous painter Marc Chagall wrote: “To whom compare her? She was like no other. She was the Bashenka-Bellochka of Vitebsk on the hill, mirrored in the Dvina with its clouds and trees and houses…”

For Chagall’s many admirers and scholars, Bella’s was an iconic image: an enchanted Bride gliding with her beloved above the magical Vitebsk, the town of their childhood. Her role as a wife and a muse to the great artist has been acknowledged and revered by all. The light of her own talent remained in the shade of her husband’s fame. 

A gifted writer and an aspiring actress, Bella put her dreams aside to follow her husband Marc Chagall into emigration, first to Europe and, when Hitler rose to power,  to the U.S. It is in New York, in safety, but increasingly homesick, that Bella Chagall started to write again. In her two books, both published posthumously, she recreated the Vitebsk of her childhood, and re-lived, in great detail, the most significant encounter of her life. Born in 1895, she died on September 2, 1944 from flu complications. Her last words were: “My notebooks…”

“Will the busy men and women of today be able to enter into her work and her work?” bemoaned Marc Chagall the loss of Bella. In this episode of Remarkable Women, we will do just that. 

RW Stories in Development

  • Olga Loginova

    PRODUCER

    Olga Loginova is a Belarusian-American documentary filmmaker and a journalist. Raised on the ruins of the Soviet Union, Olga learned to exist inside several cultures and languages, on traditions of her Siberian family, and the martyred language and culture of Belarus. She continues to walk these lines today, in her bilingual existence in Brooklyn, and her work across the borders.
    Loginova was a 2021 Fellow at Columbia Journalism Investigations, where she worked on stories about the U.S. communities experiencing extreme climate change. Her recent documentaries include COVID-19 Diaries for VICE News, and Bratva MC, Brooklyn, NY for Eurasianet. Currently, she is in postproduction on her feature documentary Sacred Leaves about the deforestation of medicinal trees in Brazil. Olga was a freelance cinematographer for PBS NewsHour, producer at Voice of America, and an award-winning documentary filmmaker at RFE/RL.
    She has produced stories about the COVID-19 pandemic and political crises in Belarus for VICE News, Brazil’s Globo and Al Jazeera. She collaborated on the award-winning feature documentaries: Our New President by Third Party Films, The Notorious Mr. Bout by Market Road Films, and First to Fall by Rachel Beth-Anderson.
    Olga Loginova has a Master’s in science, health, and environmental reporting from Columbia University, and a Master’s in broadcast and cinematic arts from Central Michigan University.