From Nov. 29 through Feb. 23, lithographs of Marc Chagall’s Jerusalem Windows will be on exhibit in the South Gallery of the Dayton Art Institute, on loan from an anonymous local patron.

In 1960, the Russian Jewish artist began the process of creating 12 stained glass windows for the Abbell Synagogue at the Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem.

The windows symbolize the 12 tribes of Israel. In the Torah, the tribes were blessed by their patriarch, Israel, at the end of the Book of Genesis, and by the prophet Moses at the end of the Book of Deuteronomy. Each window celebrates a specific color and features a quotation from the individual blessings.

“This is my modest gift to the Jewish people who have always dreamt of biblical love, friendship and of peace among all peoples,” Chagall said of his windows when the synagogue was dedicated on Feb. 6, 1962. “This is my gift to that people which lived here thousands of years ago among the other Semitic people.”

The artist also commented that during the time he worked on the windows he felt his mother and father looking over his shoulder, and behind them, millions of vanished Jews, “of yesterday and a thousand years ago.”

“Chagall envisaged the windows as ‘jewels of translucent fire,’” Dayton Art Institute Spokesperson Eric Brockman explained, “aided in part by a special process his assistant developed for applying color to the glass that allowed Chagall to use as many as three colors in a single pane, rather than using the traditional technique of separating each colored pane by a lead strip.”

In 1964, Chagall made 12 color lithographs based on the Jerusalem Windows series that echo his original designs’ “brilliant use of color, and remains populated with the same blend of real and imaginary creatures and biblical verses that celebrate Chagall’s deep sense of identification with his Jewish heritage,” Brockman added.

For more information, go to daytonartinstitute.org or call 223-4ART.   — Marshall Weiss

To view the print version of the December 2013 Observer, click here.