Chagall spent his student days at Witebsk and at the Petersburg academy under Leon Bakst, who pointed out Cézanne, van Gogh and Gaugin to him. These influences were later replaced by Cubist and Fauvist tendencies, which Chagall increasingly incorporated in his work from 1914, after he had spent four years in Paris. Chagall developed his own style after his return from Russia. His motifs were comprised of an surreal combination of symbolic pictures, consisting of Jewish religious childhood experiences and Russian folk art, combined with dream-like elements and the influence of the modern art he discovered in Paris. In 1919 the painter founded an art school in Witebsk and became its principal. That same year he was in charge of sets and costumes at the Jewish theater in Moscow. In 1922 Chagall finally left Russia via Berlin, where he produced his first graphic papers and etchings for his autobiography 'My Life', to return to France. Having arrived in Paris in 1923 Chagall encountered the art dealer Vollard, who commissioned the illustration of Gogol's book 'Dead Souls'. After a further 100 etchings on La Fontaine's 'Fables' he produced a total of 105 sheets of bible illustrations from 1930. During these years the artist went on extensive travels to Palestine, Egypt, Holland, England and Spain. In 1941 he fled to the USA, where he spent the following six years, designing stage sets for ballets by Tchaikovsky ('Aleko') and Stravinsky ('Firebird'). After a large exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1946, the artist returned to France in 1950. Chagall's quiet life in Vence was interrupted by a number of major commissions including the design of glass windows for various public buildings such as the Metz cathedral (1958), the synagogue of the Hadassah university hospital near Jerusalem (1960) and the United Nations building in New York (1964). He was also commissioned to execute a ceiling painting at the Paris opera house. When he finished that in 1964, Chagall began to paint murals at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, which were opened to the public in 1967. Beyond that, Chagall's extensive work also includes ceramics and sculptures, which the artist attempted from 1950.