CHAGALL AND MARQ Making America Windows

To make America Windows, Chagall turned to his longtime collaborator Charles Marq, who understood the artist's great sensitivity to color and brought his unique skills to their projects; he said in 1976, "When I first met Chagall, when he began making windows, it was certain that stained glass was for him the very exaltation of color at the highest intensity, and that's what excited Chagall so much." To accomplish their goals, Marq depended on flashed glass, a traditional type of glass composed of thin layers of overlaid colors, but devised modern ways to achieve the transparency, intensity, and variation of color necessary. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Chagall worked closely with his collaborator, not to translate but to reinvent his original concept in a new medium.