In August 1918, less than a full year after the Revolution, Anatoly Lunacharsky, who had befriended Chagall in Paris and was now People's Commissar for Education and Culture, approved a project by Chagall to establish an academy of art in Vitebask .... On September 12 Chagall was appointed Commissar for Art in the reorganized government of his hometown.

In his new post Chagall promptly undertook an ambitious program of exhibitions and large-scale public art projects, as well as the founding of his academy and a museum. He seized the nationwide celebration of the first anniversary of the Revolution on November 6, 1918, as an occasion to decorate the entire town of Vitebsk with hundreds of banners and flags. A legion of artists was enlisted to carry out this task under his direction, and, not surprisingly, the overall flavor of the imagery was very much à la Chagall...

On January 28, 1919, the Vitebsk Academy officially opened under Chagall's direction. During the brief existence of this institution, its faculty was to include El Lissitzky and Kasimir Malevich, two of the leading figures within the Russian avant-garde. (A. Kagan, Marc Chagall, New York, 1989,
p. 40-41)