Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall was an artist who painted like a fever dream. A Russian-French modernist, his work is a vibrant kaleidoscope of floating lovers, whimsical animals, and biblical scenes, all steeped in Jewish folklore. Picasso himself mused that Chagall must have had an angel in his head to conjure such images. Rumor has it he was "born dead" and had to be revived with needle pokes and a dunk in cold water. This may or may not be true, but it certainly fits the man who would later paint masterpieces. During his early, lean years in Paris, it's whispered he was so poor that he painted in the nude to avoid staining his only set of clothes and survived on half a herring a day. Later in life, ever the trickster, he would sometimes playfully deny being the famous artist, pointing to a stranger and saying, "Maybe that's him."