📍Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Alpes-Maritimes, France
1966 – 1985“I grew up in Vitebsk, in a poor Jewish family in the Russian Empire; my father hauled barrels of herring and my mother kept a little grocery shop. All my life I painted Vitebsk from memory — its wooden houses, fiddlers on roofs, goats, clocks and lovers floating over the town. I left for Paris, fled the Nazis to America, and came back to France after the war. In 1966, when I was almost eighty, Vava and I left Vence and built a large house on the edge of the hilltop village of Saint-Paul-de-Vence, which we called La Colline, the hill, with a big studio so I could keep working — and there was much to do. For almost twenty years I painted the village and its ramparts, with couples, goats and cockerels flying over it under blue Mediterranean skies, as I had once flown them over Vitebsk. My museum of Biblical paintings opened in nearby Nice. My final working day here was with my old lithographer friend. The mayor gave me a place in his own family plot, and I rest in the village cemetery.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today