Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (lit. Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis), was also known under the name Nikolai Konstantinovich Čiurlionis. Lithuanian composer, artist, writer. The pride of Lithuanian art.
Brief biography of Ciurlionis
Čiurlionis was born on September 10 (22), 1875 in Varena, died on March 28 (April 10), 1911. His father, peasant Konstantin Ciurlionis, knew how to play the organ and worked as an organist in the village church. Mother - Adele (German by nationality).
Soon after the birth of Konstantinas, the family moved to the village of Druskininkai. His first language was Polish. He started learning Lithuanian quite late (six years before his death). The second language was Russian.
At the age of 10, Čiurlionis completed a course at the Druskininkai Public School. In childhood he mastered the organ and from the age of six he replaced his father in services.
Ciurlionis began to study music professionally at the age of 13, on the recommendation of friends he ended up in the music school and orchestra of Prince Michal Oginski. At this school, Oginski taught talented children with his own money in order to make them musicians for his own orchestra. Čiurlionis learned to play the flute and at the same time tried to write music, which attracted the attention of Oginski. At the latter’s suggestion, Ciurlionis moved to Warsaw and entered the piano class of the Music Institute (the future Warsaw Conservatory). A year later, Čiurlionis changed his specialization and began studying composition. During that period, Čiurlionis composed a cantata for choir and orchestra, a fugue, and a piece for the piano. And I did a lot of self-education. In 1899, having graduated with honors from the institute, he rejected the offer to become director of the Lublin music school. In 1901 he entered the Leipzig Conservatory (where he studied for about a year).
In 1902, Čiurlionis began taking private drawing lessons (from J. Kausik) and devoted a lot of time to painting. In 1904 he entered the School of Fine Arts in Warsaw.
In 1905 he added Lithuanian endings to his name. In the same year he met and in 1909 married Sofia Kimantaitė, who taught Čiurlionis Lithuanian and introduced him to the Lithuanian cultural movement.
The first exhibition of Čiurlionis's works was held in Warsaw in 1905. In 1908, in Vilnius, Ciurlionis led the choir.
Ciurlionis died on April 10, 1911 in a psychiatric clinic near Warsaw after an unsuccessful attempt to escape from there, as a result of which he received pneumonia. He was buried in Vilnius at the Rossa (Rasu) cemetery.
Major works of Čiurlionis
More than fifty piano pieces were discovered in Čiurlionis’s draft notebooks. Čiurlionis's legacy continues to be published and examined. In 1907, Čiurlionis created the symphonic poem “The Sea,” which is considered the pride of Lithuanian music.
Čiurlionis is the author of more than 300 paintings, including “Sonata of the Sun”, “Sonata of Spring”, “Sonata of the Sea”, “Sonata of the Stars”, triptych “Fairy Tale”, cycle “Tale of Kings”, cycles “Creation of the World”, “Signs of the Zodiac” ", "Spring", "Winter", "Zhemayskie crosses". The works are in the Kaunas Art Museum. Ciurlionis. In Druskininkai there is the Čiurlionis Memorial House-Museum (a branch of the museum in Kaunas).
Čiurlionis's paintings are unique works of art created at the intersection of painting and music. After all, the author himself was not only an artist, but also a composer. He is considered the founder of professional Lithuanian music. Thanks to him, the national Lithuanian culture became known throughout the world.
Biography of the artist
It’s a pleasure to explore Čiurlionis’s paintings. After all, we have to analyze not only their artistic features, but also the music to which they were created, or which sounded at that moment in the author’s head. But first, let's tell you a little about the author himself.
Mikalojus Ciurlionis was born in 1875 in the town of Varene, Vilna province. Now this is the very south of Lithuania. His childhood was spent in the resort town of Druskininkai, which is still considered the “champion” of Lithuania in attracting foreign investment.
Today in Druskininkai, in the recreation park, there is practically a museum of wooden sculptures of Čiurlionis in the open air.
The father of the future artist was an organist. Mother emigrated from Regensburg, Germany, after the Catholic Church’s persecution of evangelists began there. The family spoke Polish. Until the end of his life, Čiurlionis wrote all his works and letters only in this language.
In his youth he discovered a talent for music. He began studying at the school of Prince Oginsky, which was located in Plungany, in the territory of modern Lithuania. It was here that his professional musical career began. He played in the princely orchestra.
On the initiative of Prince Ciurlionis, he entered the Warsaw Institute of Music. After successfully defending his thesis, he receives a real piano as a gift from his patron.
"In the Forest"
At the very end of the 19th century, Čiurlionis wrote the symphonic poem “In the Forest,” which became the first Lithuanian symphonic work. Thematically, it is close to his first painting, “Music of the Forest,” which he wrote in 1903.
It is worth noting that Čiurlionis’s paintings are very often in tune with his musical creations. He paints "Music of the Forest" in oils. The artistic images are simple and unpretentious. The noise in the forest is compared to music, and the wind rustling in the branches is compared to a musician touching the strings of an instrument. Such allusions are born in the head of everyone who has a well-developed imagination.
Almost all images hint at the connection between music and painting. All Čiurlionis’ paintings are distinguished by such features. The tree trunks look like the strings of a harp, and a hand emerges from the fog, as if playing them. Researchers note that this work is imperfect in many ways, but it already shows the Čiurlionis who will become famous in just a few years.
Painting classes
In 1902, Prince Oginsky dies, Čiurlionis is left without his financial patron. He is forced to return from Leipzig, where he studied at the conservatory, to Warsaw. Here he begins to take painting lessons from Jan Kausik and study at an art school.
Already in 1905, he held his first personal exhibition in Warsaw, and in 1906 he presented his paintings in St. Petersburg.
Sonata paintings
During his creative career, Čiurlionis painted about 300 works of art. Paintings with the titles “Tale of Kings” and “Fairy Tale” belong to his mythical, symbolically generalized works.
Many of his paintings were created in the Art Nouveau and Art Nouveau genres. In addition to the significant influence of the Symbolists, they show features of decorative and applied folk art, as well as Egyptian, Japanese and Indian cultures.
Mikalojus Čiurlionis often drew analogies between the worlds of music and painting. The paintings “Sonata of the Sun”, “Sonata of the Sea”, “Sonata of Spring” are combined into one general cycle of paintings-sonatas.
Astral and cosmogonic myths can be observed in his cycle “Creation of the World”, and folklore ideas can be seen in the canvas “Zhemayskie Crosses”, the cycles “Winter” and “Spring”.
Unfortunately for researchers, many of the artist’s works are lost today. The rest are in the Kaunas Art Museum. Some paintings are kept in private collections around the world.
"Sacrifice"
The paintings of M. Čiurlionis always reflected his inner world. A striking example is “Sacrifice,” written in 1909.
That year he lived in St. Petersburg and devoted almost all his time to work. He is lonely and feels misunderstood. A crisis is emerging in his personal life. His wife Sofia Kimantaite, whom he loved, leaves her husband and returns to Lithuania alone.
It was then that mental illness first appeared, which a couple of years later led to the death of the artist. But in 1909 he was still trying to fight and resist depression.
The painting “Sacrifice” dates back to this period. It is made in the most meager manner possible. Its plot is mysterious and gloomy. No one undertakes to interpret it unequivocally. In the center of the canvas is the figure of an angel, shrouded in clouds of dark smoke rising from the ground. The angel at this time looks at the sky, as if asking what other sacrifices will be required of him. The picture is full of anxiety and gloomy forebodings.
"Fugue"
Many of his works are striking examples of the synthesis of arts. This is exactly what Ciurlionis wanted. The painting "Fugue" is a striking example. With its help, we can see the artistic and musical significance of the work for the author.
Why did the artist call his painting a musical term? The answer is in the images that we see on the canvas. Elements similar to each other alternate and are located on several levels. All this clearly resembles the melodic rhythms of a piece of music. We can clearly see its rhythm in the images created by the artist.
At the same time, the painter was constantly tormented by depression, and every year it became more and more difficult to cope with them. In 1911, he died of a sudden cold and complete mental exhaustion.
Autumn. Naked Garden.
Half-naked trees make noise and cover the paths with leaves, and the sky
gray-gray, and as sad as only a soul can be sad.
M. K. Ciurlionis
The life of M. K. Čiurlionis was short, but creatively bright and eventful. He created approx. 300 paintings, approx. 350 pieces of music, mostly piano miniatures (240). He has several works for chamber ensembles, for choir, organ, but most of all Čiurlionis loved the orchestra, although he wrote little orchestral music: 2 symphonic poems “In the Forest” (1900), “The Sea” (1907), the overture “Kastutis” ( 1902) (Kestutis - the last prince of pre-Christian Lithuania, who became famous in the fight against the crusaders, died in 1382). Sketches of the “Lithuanian Pastoral Symphony” and sketches of the symphonic poem “Creation of the World” have been preserved. (Currently, almost the entire legacy of Čiurlionis - paintings, graphics, autographs of musical works - is stored in his museum in Kaunas.) Čiurlionis lived in a bizarre fantasy world, which, in his words, “only intuition can suggest.” He loved to be alone with nature: watching the sunset, wandering through the forest at night, walking towards a thunderstorm. Listening to the music of nature, in his works he sought to convey its eternal beauty and harmony. The images of his works are conventional, the key to them is in the symbolism of folk legends, in that special fusion of fantasy and reality that is characteristic of the people's worldview. Folk art “must become the foundation of our art...” wrote Čiurlionis. - “...Lithuanian music rests in folk songs... These songs are like blocks of precious marble and await only a genius who will be able to create immortal creations from them.” It was Lithuanian folk songs, legends and fairy tales that brought up the artist in Čiurlionis. From early childhood they penetrated into his consciousness, became a part of his soul, and took their place next to the music of J. S. Bach and P. Tchaikovsky.
Čiurlionis's first music teacher was his father, an organist. In 1889-93. Čiurlionis studied at the orchestra school of M. Oginski (grandson of the composer M. K. Oginski) in Plunge; in 1894-99 studied composition at the Warsaw Music Institute with Z. Moskovsky; and in 1901-02 he improved at the Leipzig Conservatory with K. Reinecke. A person of diverse interests. Čiurlionis eagerly absorbed all musical impressions, enthusiastically studied art history, psychology, philosophy, astrology, physics, mathematics, geology, paleontology, etc. His student notebooks contain a bizarre interweaving of sketches of musical compositions and mathematical formulas, drawings of a section of the earth's crust and poetry.
After graduating from the conservatory, Ciurlionis lived in Warsaw for several years (1902-06), and here he began to become more and more interested in painting. From now on, musical and artistic interests constantly intersect, determining the breadth and versatility of his educational activities in Warsaw, and from 1907 in Vilnius, Čiurlionis became one of the founders of the Lithuanian art society and the music section under it, directed the Kankles choir, organized Lithuanian art exhibitions, music competitions , was involved in music publishing, streamlining Lithuanian musical terminology, participated in the work of the folklore commission, and led concert activities as a choral conductor and pianist. And how many ideas were not implemented! He cherished thoughts about the Lithuanian music school and music library, about the National Palace in Vilnius. He also dreamed of traveling to distant countries, but his dreams only partially came true: in 1905 Čiurlionis visited the Caucasus, in 1906 he visited Prague, Vienna, Dresden, Nuremberg, and Munich. In 1908-09 Čiurlionis lived in St. Petersburg, where since 1906 his paintings were repeatedly exhibited at exhibitions, arousing the admiration of A. Scriabin and the artists of the World of Art. The interest was mutual. The romantic symbolism of Čiurlionis, the cosmic cult of the elements - the sea, the sun, the motives of climbing to shining peaks behind the soaring bird of Happiness - all this echoes the symbolic images of A. Scriabin, L. Andreev, M. Gorky, A. Blok. They are also brought together by the desire for a synthesis of arts characteristic of the era. In the work of Čiurlionis, there is often a simultaneous poetic, pictorial and musical embodiment of the idea. Thus, in 1907 he completed the symphonic poem “The Sea”, and after it wrote the piano cycle “The Sea” and the pictorial triptych “Sonata of the Sea” (1908). Along with piano sonatas and fugues, there are paintings “Sonata of the Stars”, “Sonata of Spring”, “Sonata of the Sun”, “Fugue”; poetic cycle "Autumn Sonata". Their commonality is in the identity of images, in a subtle sense of color, in the desire to embody the ever-repeating and ever-changing rhythms of Nature - the great Universe generated by the imagination and thought of the artist: "...The wider the wings open, the further the circle goes around, the easier it will become, the more a happier person will be..." (M. K. Ciurlionis). Čiurlionis' life was very short. He died in the prime of his creative powers, on the threshold of universal recognition and glory, on the eve of his greatest achievements, without having time to accomplish much of his plans. Like a meteor, his artistic gift flared up and went out, leaving us with a unique, inimitable art, born of the imagination of an original creative nature; an art that Romain Rolland called “a completely new continent.” It contains a feeling of the infinity and greatness of the Universe, it contains the struggle of powerful elements, overcoming which Man strives for the true, the good, the beautiful.
O. Averyanova
Ciurlionis Mikalojus Konstantinas
Artist, composer
I will fly to distant worlds, to the land of eternal beauty, sun and fantasy, to an enchanted land...
M.K.Ciurlionis
The artist's father was the son of a peasant from the southern part of Lithuania - Dzukija. In his youth, Konstantin Ciurlionis, having learned to write in Polish and Russian, also learned from the village organist the basics of the art of playing the organ. The future artist's mother Adele was from a German family of evangelists who left Germany due to religious persecution. The girl took care of herself, since her family was left without a father early on and lived in poverty. Adele worked in service in the count's family, and thanks to this she had the opportunity to study and read. She spoke German, Polish, and Lithuanian well, and was witty and cheerful. Adele knew many songs, loved to sing and was a good storyteller.
Konstantin and Adele got married in 1873 and then settled in Varena, a town in southern Lithuania. In this town, on September 22, 1875, their son was born. His parents gave him the double name Mikalojus-Konstantinas.
The double name - in Russian Nikolai Konstantin - was given at baptism, so the Russian version of the artist’s name was Nikolai Konstantinovich Churlionis, and only later the generally accepted Lithuanian Mikalojus Konstantinas Churlionis was established. The monogram of the letters M-K-CH acquired a symbolic character for the artist; he included it in the compositions of a number of his works, and it became a graphic, easily recognizable sign of everything connected with Čiurlionis. Jadwiga, Ciurlionis's sister, wrote that the first name Mikalojus was never mentioned in the family, it seemed to be forgotten, and at home everyone called his brother Constant. Lithuanian endings appeared later.
Three years after the birth of their son, the family moved to Druskininkai. His father served in the church, his mother ran a household and raised children - Constant had eight younger brothers and sisters.
Čiurlionis received his first music lessons from his father, and by the age of seven the boy knew musical notation and could play fluently from sight.
At the age of ten, “Nikolai-Konstantin Konstantinovich Churlyanis, from a peasant background... successfully completed a course at the Druskininkai Public School,” and for the first time his parents had to seriously think about the future of their eldest son. By this time there were already four children, the family led a more than modest existence. A ten-year-old son could continue his studies only in the provincial city of Grodno, in a gymnasium, but his parents could not support him there, far from home. And Konstant spent another three years in Druskininkai, doing nothing special except music.
During these years, the small village of Druskininkai became a fashionable resort, famous for its mineral waters. Visiting music lovers increasingly gathered in the organist’s house. They listened with interest to the play of the little “prodigy.” One of them, a family friend, doctor Yu. Markevich, took part in the boy’s fate. Markevich recommended Churlionis Jr. to his acquaintance, a passionate music lover, Prince M. Oginsky. Oginski's estate was located in Plunge. There was also an orchestra school there, which he maintained at his own expense. Thirteen-year-old Ciurlionis ended up in it after graduating from primary school. Here he learned to play the flute and made his first, timid experiments in composing music. Prince Oginsky, who considered himself a philanthropist, was so pleased with Čiurlionis’ diligence that he even took upon himself to pay for his further studies.
In 1893, Ciurlionis went to Warsaw, where from the beginning of 1894 he was enrolled in the piano class of the Institute of Music (later the Warsaw Conservatory). From that time on, for twelve years he remained closely associated with Warsaw and all these years, he experienced the influence of the artistic atmosphere of the capital of Poland, which was then part of the Russian Empire.
He passed the first stage of training with Professor T. Brzezicki, the second with A. Sygetinsky - not only a famous musician, but also a writer. The student's repertoire included works by Bach, Haydn and Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin. In the first years of his studies, having begun to study counterpoint under the guidance of Z. Noskovsky, Čiurlionis began to compose himself. His first works were short pieces for piano. He performed them in a narrow circle - in Warsaw, in the family of Doctor Markovich, with whose children he continued to be friends in Druskininkai, in the summer, when he, as always, came home for vacation. These first plays dated back to 1896. We can assume that the composer Čiurlionis has been known since this time, that is, from the time when he was twenty years old.
A year later, Čiurlionis changed his specialty and began studying composition. He wrote a lot - cantata for choir and orchestra, fugues, small pieces for piano. Some compositions were successful - the prelude, nocturne and mazurka were published in the Warsaw musical almanac "Meloman". During his student years, Čiurlionis became interested in history and natural sciences; in literature, Dostoevsky, Hugo, Hoffmann, Poe and Ibsen are close to him. He combines a romantic dream of a better, just world with an interest in modern classical philosophy.
In 1899, Ciurlionis graduated with honors from the institute and was offered the position of director of the newly founded music school in Lublin. He refused - because he could not be a musical director, and because well-being and inner peace of mind were not characteristic of him. He burned with a thirst for creativity. Čiurlionis conceived his first major composition - the symphonic poem "In the Forest". The history of Lithuanian professional music began with this work. In its genre it was a landscape painting, the lyrical theme of which was the life of nature, but not nature in general, but Lithuanian nature. This poem remains among the best achievements of Lithuanian music.
Čiurlionis considered it necessary for himself to continue his studies. In the autumn of 1901 he went to Germany, where he became a student at the Leipzig Conservatory. The Directorate of the Conservatory took into account the wishes of Čiurlionis, and he began to study with Karl Reinecke and Solomon Jadassohn. The letters that he wrote during the last months of 1901 created a rather lively and vivid picture of Čiurlionis’s academic life in Leipzig, characterized him himself and recorded a new “leit theme” of his aspirations: embarrassed and making fun of himself, he more than once mentioned his studies painting: “I’m writing briefly, I don’t have much time, and I don’t want to take away from you either. Everything is as before, I just got a lot of work. I have three colleagues: an American, an Englishman, a Czech. I speak with the first two in English and in French, and with the third - in Czech. You yourself understand that we can hardly come to an agreement. Maybe because of this we sympathize with each other: I work, play, sing, read, and I almost feel good... I bought it. paints and canvas. You will probably say that the canvas could be useful for something else. My dear, I also feel remorse over these wasted stamps, but I must have some kind of entertainment for the holidays.”
In the fall of 1902, having received his diploma, Ciurlionis returned to Warsaw. In Warsaw, having refused a place at the Conservatory, he lived on income from private lessons and composed fugues, fuguettes and canons. But soon, due to the action of internal reasons and creative inclinations, which manifested themselves in him from early youth, but were dormant for the time being, Čiurlionis made a transition to painting.
Čiurlionis was equally talented in music, painting and verbal creativity. And he felt the need to express himself in at least two of these creative fields - at different times with different intensities - in music and in painting. The small verbal legacy he left behind - lyrical entries in his diary, the poem "Autumn" written in "quasi-sonata form", several essays and correspondence - proves that he could become a writer, just as he became a musician and artist.
Čiurlionis diligently filled his albums and drawing sheets with sketches, studies from nature, and worked painstakingly on boring plaster masks. Together with his closest friend and professional musician Eugeniusz Morawski, they attend private drawing classes. The summer in Druskininkai was devoted to an activity that completely absorbed him: nature, human figures, the faces of his family - he recorded all this, at first without trying to find any special style.
In the fall of 1903, he painted the oil painting “Music of the Forest.” Its theme and title sounded reminiscent of the symphonic poem “In the Forest,” which he had composed earlier. The picture was simple, its images were born of the simplest literary and poetic comparisons: the noise in the forest is music; straight pine trunks - strings; the wind flying past the trees is the musician who touches and vibrates the sounding strings. The landscape here is only a symbolic form.
Symbolism, already established in the poetry and painting of Paris in the 1880s and 1890s, spread throughout Europe. Generated by a close feeling of the end of the old society, symbolism saw the reason for this in the rationalism and materialism of the 19th century. Inspired by Schopenhauer's famous aphorism - "there are as many different worlds as there are thinkers", this subjectivist movement sought the highest reality in the life of ideas. Following Verlaine, Mallarmé, Hussemans, following Gustave Moreau and Odilon Redon, artists tried to capture the nuances of innermost feelings and capture their dreams, intuitive flashes of fantasy and memories. It was about the search for new beauty, the incomprehensible “beauty of the mysterious.”
Čiurlionis's early works are pastels. Čiurlionis took his first, not very confident steps in graphics and painting along the roads paved by the masters of Polish and German symbolism. But features emerged that later made Čiurlionis a true son of his time, a distinctive and original master.
In many works of the beginning of the century, the principle of interaction and interpenetration of arts was affirmed; a tendency to expand the traditionally closed boundaries of types and genres has become characteristic. It was believed that music most fully and widely reflects the spiritual life and harmony of the world. For Čiurlionis, as a professional musician who is just starting to paint, one painting is not enough to express himself. He built the concept of the "Funeral Symphony" according to the laws of temporary arts as part of a musical composition.
In 1904, the School of Fine Arts opened in Warsaw - a higher educational institution established by the artist Kazimir Stabrowski, modeled on the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. And Ciurlionis went to study at a new educational institution. Teaching at the school differed sharply from the accepted academic traditions of teaching the fine arts. There were no casts; students were asked to deal not so much with detailing the image, but with conveying the mood, character, and movement of living nature. Each of the students worked not only in graphics and painting, but also in sculpture, tried themselves in ceramics, stained glass, decorations, and book design. With the exception of ceramics, examples of his work of all these types can be found in Čiurlionis. Several sketches of stained glass compositions made by Čiurlionis have survived. He also did glass engraving.
Čiurlionis's first sheets were simple: small village landscapes with lead-gray skies, huts, snow-covered hills and dark tree trunks. They are made according to drawings from life. Later, the artist’s imagination increasingly intruded into natural motifs. The clouds acquired complex anthropomorphic shapes, collided in intense struggle (“Grove”), rushed in rapid flight (“Buttress”), or rose from the ground to the sky in a crowd of worshipers, rhythmically repeating the shapes of the trees huddled near the village bell tower (“Bell Tower”). Čiurlionis’ path lay from objective, calm recording of landscapes to dramatization of nature.
In the summer of 1905, the academy went outdoors to a picturesque area near Lublin. That same summer, an exhibition of works by academy students is held in Warsaw. Čiurlionis's paintings attracted the most attention from the public, and several of his works were selected by buyers, who had to pay for them and pick them up after the exhibition closed. In one of his letters to his brother at that time, he writes the following lines full of optimism: “I have an even greater craving for painting than before, I must become an artist. At the same time, I will continue to play music and do other things. Only health would be enough, but I I wish I could keep going and moving forward!”
The same summer of 1905 is associated with the artist’s journey to the Caucasus and Crimea, thanks to Bronislava Wolman, whose family Čiurlionis had known for more than a year. Together with her son Bronislav, he studied at the art academy, and gave music lessons to his youngest daughter Galina. The last six years of the artist’s life were marked by friendly relations with this family, and Bronislava Wolman, who was among the few art lovers who sincerely believed in Čiurlionis’s unusual talent, came to his aid more than once in difficult times. Wolman acquired his paintings, which not only helped the needy artist and instilled confidence in him, but also saved many of Čiurlionis’s works from destruction in the future.
Warm relations are inspired by the theme of one of the most romantic and lofty in spirit works of Čiurlionis, “Friendship” in 1906, which he presented to Bronislawa Wolman. A number of his musical works are dedicated to her, including the most significant thing written by the composer - the symphonic poem “The Sea”. Many of his piano miniatures are associated with the young Galina.
The trip brought Čiurlionis many new impressions and gave impetus to his artistic consciousness. He wrote: “I painted or sat for hours by the sea, especially at sunset, I always came to him, and I always felt good, and every time it got better...”
The artist’s works of 1905-1906 were based on reflection on people’s desire for happiness. About the thirst for truth, justice, brotherhood. And about the cruelty of reality, in which sparks of hope burn out.
“She flies into the sky, high above the world, crowned with an outlandish headdress of golden feathers. Her eyelids are closed. With both hands - carefully and tenderly - she carries a softly shining ball in front of her. The radiant light triumphs, conquering the cold emptiness...” - Ciurlionis called This allegory is meaningfully "Friendship".
It is pitch black and empty around the strictly unapproachable man holding a candle. Attracted by the flames, moths flock to the ground. The fire that calls them is deceptive. Scorching their wings, they die helplessly. But still they fly and fly. The man stands confidently, sternly, and in his outstretched hand is a candle with the inextinguishable fire of truth and hope...
The artist’s dream of world harmony and beauty gave birth to the painting cycles “Creation of the World” and “Signs of the Zodiac”.
A shimmering bluish nebula against the background of a lifeless, dark blue... A sharp profile with a semblance of a crown at the top looks into the bottomless... A palm is extended horizontally above the space in an affirming gesture, below is an inscription in Polish: “Let it be!” The impenetrable space begins to turn into an organized cosmos: luminaries flare up in the blue darkness and spiral vortices mark the birth of new ones, they shine above the surface of the waters, and restless clouds rush across the revived sky, and the crimson sun rises on the horizon!.. All this passes before us in the first place six paintings from the “Creation of the World” cycle. The view of the changing cosmic panorama makes the viewer complicit in the majestic movements of matter and the spirit of the mind. The world begins to live, sparkle, bloom. Čiurlionis talks not about the creation of the earth, but about the emergence of the beauty of the world. The leaves of the cycle go from disordered chaos to harmony.
The years 1905-1906 were a time of powerful revolutionary upheavals in the Russian Empire. Both Poland, subordinate to the Russian Tsar, and Lithuania, which was not allocated in any way within the rest of the empire, turned out to be hotbeds of strong unrest. Among the intelligentsia to which Ciurlionis belonged, anti-government sentiments prevailed. Like other representatives of the intelligentsia of Lithuanian origin, Ciurlionis also begins to identify himself as Lithuanian not only ethnically, but also culturally and socially. “Are you aware of the Lithuanian movement?” he wrote in a letter to his brother at the height of the January Warsaw Uprising of 1906. “I have decided to devote all my previous and future works to Lithuania.”
The stormy year 1906 brought Čiurlionis a new turn in his own development, changes in his work, and many events in his life. An exhibition of the Warsaw Art School was organized in the capital of Russia within the walls of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. Čiurlionis's paintings aroused particular interest among visitors and critics. In two large metropolitan newspapers, St. Petersburg Vedomosti and Birzhevye Vedomosti, the critic Breshko-Breshkovsky, describing the Warsaw School exhibition, paid attention primarily to Ciurlionis. These two articles in the St. Petersburg press are the first significant review of the artist’s art: “...When talking about the students of the Warsaw school, one cannot in any case pass over in silence the long series of fantastic pastels by Churlianis. Churlianis is a Litvin by birth. According to Stabrovsky, he, in addition, , and a musician who graduated from two conservatories. His musicality partly explains his mystical, vague creativity. You see right in front of you an artist accustomed to dreaming with sounds. It seems that this Churlyanis can develop into an original artist. original, does not imitate anyone, paving his own path. Right there, at the exhibition, is his portrait, painted by a comrade. What a noble head with intelligent, noble eyes! This is a pantheist of the purest water. clear, smiling, then angry, darkened, punishing... There is a lot of vague, unspoken things in it, like in sounds! It’s not for nothing that Churlyanis is a musician.”
After Leipzig, while studying at a painting school, creating dozens of paintings and earning a living by giving lessons, Čiurlionis composed music. Freed from performing mandatory conservatory assignments, from the end of 1903 he wrote small piano pieces, mainly preludes and variations, and in three years, over fifty such pieces accumulated in Čiurlionis’s draft notebooks, if we count only those that are known. These notebooks are almost the only source of information about the composer’s piano works. The symphonic poem "The Sea", created in 1907, is now the pride of Lithuanian symphonic music. But the poem was performed only when a quarter of a century had passed since the composer’s death.
In the summer of 1906, Čiurlionis visited Prague, Dresden, Nuremberg, Munich, and Vienna. In his letters, he described his artistic impressions of the works of European masters. It is interesting to see his listing: “Nuremberg, Prague, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Böcklin, and Velazquez, Rubens, Titian, Holbein, Raphael, Murillo, etc.” - thus, Böcklin, placed between Rembrandt and Velázquez, Ciurlionis found himself among the “greatest.”
Towards the end of the year, Čiurlionis went to Vilnius (then Vilno), where he became the organizer and one of the participants in the First Lithuanian Art Exhibition. Opened on December 27, 1906, the exhibition was of practical importance during the first period of cultural and national revival of Lithuania. Among students and the small Vilnius intelligentsia, Čiurlionis’s works were perceived as very significant. After the establishment of the Lithuanian Art Society, Čiurlionis was invited to participate in it. Together with his colleagues in the arts, he developed a charter in which, in addition to the noble tasks of unification, material and moral support for people of art, educational goals were also declared, such as, for example, “the development of the artistic culture of the population, the encouragement of folk art.”
Elected as a board member of the society and deeply involved in the practical affairs of the Lithuanian cultural movement, Čiurlionis left Warsaw to move to Vilnius.
The first years, the first steps of the “Lithuanian Renaissance” are associated with the name of Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis. In his person, the cultural and educational movement received not only the first professional composer who sensitively sensed the nature of Lithuanian music and the most brilliant Lithuanian painter, but also an intelligent publicist who knew how to speak clearly, with depth and poetry about the pressing problems of cultural revival. All this remained in his legacy and today is perceived as a golden fund of the cultural heritage of Lithuanians. However, there was much more to which he devoted his time and energy: government-sanctioned Lithuanian public schools opened - and Čiurlionis compiled a collection of folk songs, which he adapted for singing in the school children's choir; new composers appeared - Čiurlionis prepared and published the terms of the competition in support of young musicians; A Lithuanian choir was organized in Vilnius - Čiurlionis became its leader.
Acquaintance with a student of the Faculty of Philology of the University of Krakow, Sofia Kimantaitė, grew into a tender friendship. Sofia taught Ciurlionis the Lithuanian language - he knew almost neither the language nor his native literature - opened the world of Lithuanian poetry and prose for him, and became his lover and bride.
The second Lithuanian exhibition, organized by the Art Society, opened on February 28, 1908. Compared to the first, the number of participants increased, the exposition was more extensive. Čiurlionis presented 59 works, including the “Zodiac” cycle, several cycles dedicated to the seasons (“Spring”, “Summer”, “Winter”), and his first pictorial sonatas, which were called “Sonata I” in the catalog " and "Sonata II", known as "Sonata of the Sun" and "Sonata of Spring".
The exhibition was open for a month, then it was transferred to Kaunas. Although laudable reviews appeared in the press about the exhibition and Čiurlionis’s works, participation in it gave him little benefit: the paintings did not sell.
In the fall of 1908, Ciurlionis left Lithuania and went to St. Petersburg. In St. Petersburg, having with him a letter of recommendation from the artist and critic Lev Antokolsky who lived in Vilnius, who more than once wrote best about Ciurlionis in the press, he came to Mstislav Dobuzhinsky. The same age as Ciurlionis, but by that time already a well-known artist, Dobuzhinsky was a native of Lithuania, and in the same 1908 his works were exhibited in Vilnius.
Dobuzhinsky took the closest part in his affairs. “I told my friends about Čiurlionis’s paintings,” Dobuzhinsky wrote in his memoirs. “They became very interested in the artist’s work, and soon Benois, Somov, Lanceray, Bakst and Sergei Makovsky (editor of Apollo magazine) came to see everything that he had brought with him.” himself Čiurlionis...At that time, Makovsky was planning to organize a large exhibition. Čiurlionis’s paintings made such a strong impression on us all that it was immediately decided to invite him to participate in this exhibition. The first thing that struck us about Čiurlionis’s paintings was their originality and unusualness. They were not like any other paintings, and the nature of his work seemed deep and hidden to us.
It was obvious that Čiurlionis’s art was filled with Lithuanian folk motifs. But his imagination, everything that was hidden behind his musical “programs”, the ability to look into the infinity of space, in the depths of centuries made Čiurlionis an artist extremely broad and deep, stepping far beyond the narrow circle of national art.”
Benois, Bakst, Somov, Lanseray, Makovsky became interested in his work and took him under their protection. The circle of people that formed around the wonderful artist, historian and theorist of painting, one of the most educated people in Russia at that time, Alexander Benois, had been known for ten years. At first it consisted of a dozen friends who gathered at the house of Benoit’s parents to jointly read and discuss lectures and books about painting, literature, history, and listen to music. Later, the members of the circle were seized by the idea of educational activities, of promoting culture in Russian society, and for this purpose they began to publish the magazine “World of Art”. This is how the word “world-artists” became established in the history of Russian culture, which denoted a group of artists who took part in the magazine and exhibitions under this name.
Of the numerous works brought by the artist, four were accepted for the salon exhibition opened by Makovsky at the beginning of 1909: the two-part “Star Sonata”, “Prelude” and “Fugue”. At this exhibition, artistic Petersburg also became acquainted with the musician Ciurlionis: his works were performed next to the plays of Scriabin and Medtner.
Ciurlionis was invited to the exhibition of the Union of Russian Artists, the largest creative association in Russia. In the same year, three of his new paintings appeared at the 6th exhibition of the Union.
The “craving for theatricality,” which captivated many masters, is the most interesting moment in the artistic life of this period. “World-Artists” worked successfully at this time in the largest theaters in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and in the Parisian enterprise of S. Diaghilev. The idea of a synthesis of arts did not leave Ciurlionis indifferent.
In the autumn of 1908, he conceived “Jurate - Queen of the Baltic” - a national opera based on folklore motifs. Its script was written by Sofia Kimantaite. Čiurlionis composed the music and made sketches of the scenery. But Čiurlionis did not finish the opera. Only isolated musical fragments and a few sketches of scenery have been preserved in his archive.
By the end of the year he returned to Lithuania. On January 1, 1909, the wedding of Konstantinas and Sophia took place. Immediately after the wedding, the newlyweds went to St. Petersburg.
The attention of artistic circles did not change anything in Čiurlionis’s life - there was no income. With the end of winter, he and Sofia returned to Lithuania, and, as always happened in spring and summer, Čiurlionis again began a period of intense work.
“The joy is incredible,” he described working on a curtain for the Lithuanian theater in Vilnius. “I stretched a canvas 6 meters wide and 4 meters high onto the wall, primed it myself. In two days I made a sketch with charcoal. And then with the help of a stepladder the craziest drawing took place Zosia helped me a lot in styling the flowers, so the work was just in full swing.”
The paintings were painted one after another: “I enjoyed my time wonderfully, because I painted about 20 paintings, which sometimes I am dissatisfied with, and sometimes I arrange them, look closely and rejoice...”
“I wrote mostly from 9 a.m. to 6 or 7, and then less, only because the days got shorter.”
Musical works also appeared: one after another, he composed five or seven preludes literally in a few days. More precisely, he “manages to write down” the preludes - very often the germs of his music did not remain on paper.
The creative upsurge of the summer months of 1909, experienced in Plunge, required gigantic effort. Returning to St. Petersburg in September 1909, he devoted himself entirely to work. The body could not withstand the strain of creative forces and everyday self-restraint. Notes of anxiety intensify in his art. This is how the minor reflection “Cemetery” arises: the sun has gone, and against the yellowing background of the sky, crosses rise in sad silhouettes above the high hills. Chapels, trees. The theme outlined here is developed in the painting “Zhematia Cemetery”. Čiurlionis began to experience bouts of mental illness.
“In the fall, when he returned,” said Dobuzhinsky, “I was busy for a long time in Moscow, at the Art Theater, and in my absence he visited our family once or twice, and then disappeared. Returning to St. Petersburg at the beginning of winter, I began to worry, that he did not show up with us, and went to see him (at that time he lived on Izmailovsky Prospekt). I found him absolutely ill. I urgently informed his wife in Vilnius and his friend Ch. Sasnauskas, who lived in St. Petersburg... ".
Before Christmas, Sofia took her husband to Druskininkai. Sometimes he walked, sometimes he sat down at the instrument and, as before, began to improvise. Then there was a sharp deterioration. One of his friends came from Warsaw to be with the patient and help care for him, but it soon became obvious that Ciurlionis needed to be placed in a hospital. He was taken to Warsaw, and from there to nearby Pustelniki, where he remained to live in a small private clinic for the mentally ill. Čiurlionis spent more than a year in the hospital. By the end of the spring of 1910, encouraging signs appeared in the patient’s condition. But the expected discharge did not follow, although for some time Ciurlionis was indeed noticeably better. He was even allowed to draw a little and was informed about the birth of his daughter. A short note of congratulations to Sofia and little Danuta was his last letter.
Meanwhile, Čiurlionis’s paintings were exhibited at exhibitions that followed one after another in Vilnius, Warsaw, Moscow and St. Petersburg. His name began to be pronounced with respect not only in a narrow circle of painters who knew him personally, but also in a wider circle of artistic intelligentsia, in circles of painting lovers. In his critical articles, Alexander Benois named Ciurlionis among the talented masters of Russia. When the World of Art society was revived in 1910, Čiurlionis was recognized as one of its members. One of his works was exhibited at the World of Art exhibition and an invitation was received to participate in an exhibition abroad - in Munich.
But Čiurlionis shared the fate of many great talents. Slava was late, and on April 10, 1911, Ciurlionis, who was not even 36 years old, passed away. The news of Čiurlionis' death revealed for the first time that his art touched many. The feelings of those who knew his work closely, and who mourned him more than others, were expressed by the artist Dobuzhinsky in a letter to Alexandre Benois: “Death, however, often somehow “affirms,” and in this case all his art does (for me, at least) a genuine and true revelation. All these dreams about the unearthly become terribly significant...” Comparing Ciurlionis with Vrubel, who died a year earlier in 1910, Dobuzhinsky wrote that both had “almost the same end,” and that both are “loners in art.”
Within two or three years after his death, large exhibitions of Čiurlionis’s works were organized in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Vilnius, his paintings were exhibited at the Second International Exhibition of Post-Impressionists in London, his music began to be played in concerts, articles were written about him, the first book was published and dedicated to Ciurlionis monographic collection.
In 1918, the Soviet government of Lithuania, by a special decree, nationalized the paintings of Čiurlionis, classifying them among the “creations of geniuses of human thought.” Soon the Čiurlionis State Art Museum was established in Kaunas. “It is simply impossible to express how excited I am by this truly magical art, which has enriched not only painting, but also expanded our horizons in the field of polyphony and musical rhythm. How fruitful the development of this discovery could be in the painting of large spaces, in the monumental fresco! This is a new spiritual continent, and Čiurlionis will undoubtedly remain its Christopher Columbus!” - this is how Romain Rolland assessed Čiurlionis’ talent.
Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis was a musician, artist and poet. The dream of the unity of the arts (the idea of a “synthesis of arts”) found in Čiurlionis perhaps the best embodiment to this day. In all world painting, the works of this master occupy a special place. His best works excite precisely because of their “musical painting.”
In 2010, a television program was prepared about Mikalojus Čiurlionis.
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Text prepared by Andrey Goncharov
Materials used:
Materials from the site www.centre.smr.ru
Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis
You probably won’t find in the history of art such a miracle worker as Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis.
He was a quiet, dreamy man. With the sad look of large, piercing blue eyes, as if they had absorbed the colors of the lakes of his homeland - Lithuania. When he sat down at the piano, he was completely transformed. Throwing back strands of unruly hair from his forehead, he played with inspiration and amazing soulfulness. He was a musical wizard.
Čiurlionis did not live long - less than 36 years. His days were filled to the brim with creativity. He worked, by his own admission, twenty-five (25!) hours a day. He did not have enough time, measured by nature. And means of living too. I had to run through lessons, which were almost the musician’s only income. His works were rarely performed and were almost never published. And the pictures caused ridicule.
Fame came to Ciurlionis many years after his death. Now Mikalojus Ciurlionis is rightfully considered the founder of Lithuanian national music, its classic. He left more than three hundred and fifty works. The most famous are the symphonic poems “The Sea”, “In the Forest”, and piano preludes.
His music is soft, lyrical, colorful, and restrainedly dramatic. It was born of Lithuanian folk tunes, native nature - tremulous like the autumn air, slow and smooth, like the flow of rivers across the plains of Lithuania, discreet like the hills of his homeland, thoughtful, like the haze of Lithuanian pre-dawn mists.
M.K. Ciurlionis “Friendship”And most importantly, it is picturesque. Listening to it, it is as if in reality we see pictures of nature painted with sounds. Čiurlionis’ music so vividly conveys visual impressions.
While composing music, Čiurlionis himself saw these pictures “through the eyes of his soul.” They lived in his imagination so vividly that the composer wanted to transfer them to canvas. And a professional musician who graduated from the Warsaw and Leipzig Conservatories again becomes a student. He attends a painting school.
The Lithuanian poet Eduardas Meželaitis seemed to overhear the thoughts of Čiurlionis, who decided to radically change his fate: “The blood vessels of the artist are oversaturated with sounds, colors, rhythms, feelings. He must unload. Must free myself. Otherwise the heart will not be able to bear it... Create an image of the world! Sounds? With sounds! But the sounds are moistened and turned into colors. The blue music of the sky, the green music of the forest, the amber music of the sea, the silver music of the stars sounds... Yes, this is a color melody! So, with the help of sounds alone you cannot express the perfection of the world? We must take up paints, take up painting.”
And Ciurlionis becomes a painter.
Not an ordinary painter, but an artist-musician.
Without leaving music, he paints one picture after another - about three hundred pictorial compositions. And each is a philosophical poem in color, a symphony of pictorial rhythms and musical visions.
“They seemed to me like music, attached with paints and varnishes to the canvas,” said artist Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva. “Their strength and harmony captivated.”
M. K. Ciurlionis “In Free Flight” Romain Rolland was literally shocked by the musical magic of the Lithuanian magician’s paintings. The French writer called him a pioneer in painting, who found a new “spiritual continent”, just as Columbus found new lands.
Čiurlionis even in the titles of his paintings emphasized their relationship with music. He called his first painting composition “Music of the Forest.” It became a visual parallel to his own symphonic poem “In the Forest”. The same mysterious whisper of pine trees, the sounds of the wind, similar to the plucking of harps. And the composition of the picture, the arrangement of tree trunks with a branch crossing them out from above, resembles the outline of a harp. This is indeed an Aeolian harp, sounding from the touch of air currents. The melody born of the pine trees is carried away into the harsh distance of the Baltic waters, illuminated by the yellowish strip of sunset.
The wind will strike the hundred-ringed brass,
And note after note will sound mournfully,
It’s like Čiurlionis’s “Forest” from a sheet of paper
Someone inspired is playing in the forest.
E. Mezhelaitis
Of course, it would be naive to identify Čiurlionis’s paintings with music. First of all, these are works of fine art. But the artist took the principle of a composition, for example a fugue or a sonata, and found correspondence to it in the pictorial composition, in the color, and rhythms of his paintings. They are unusual, fantastic. However, this is not a mindless jumble of lines and colors. In the most “unreal” compositions of Čiurlionis, real signs of his native Lithuanian landscapes are visible.
Whistler also argued that nature contains the colors and elements of all paintings, just as the keyboard of a piano contains all musical works. And the artist’s job, his calling, is to be able to select and skillfully group these elements, just as a musician creates a melody from the chaos of sounds.
The Lithuanian master took the advice of the romantic artist and translated it into paintings in his own way. In his works one can hear echoes of worlds that people could not see with their own eyes at that time. And only in our space age we are surprised to recognize in his paintings the real outlines of the Universe, which appeared before us in photographs received from space. And at the beginning of the century, soon after the artist’s death, participants in one of the polar expeditions discovered a landscape in the Far North that seemed to have been copied by a Lithuanian master, although he had never been to the Arctic. This cape on Franz Josef Land was named after Ciurlionis.
It turns out that his paintings are as real as folk tales or a daring flight of dreams - as a prediction of future discoveries. This is how his picturesque sonatas arose - sun, stars, spring, summer. Fine art in his creations entered into an alliance with music.
“There are no boundaries between the arts,” said Ciurlionis. - Music combines poetry and painting and has its own architecture. Painting can also have the same architecture as music and express sounds in colors.”
The laws inherent in music are clearly visible in the famous “Sonatas” of Mikalojus Ciurlionis, in his picturesque “Fugue”.
Musicians call a sonata a complex instrumental piece in which various, often opposing themes collide and fight with each other, in order to achieve the victory of the main melody in the finale. The sonata is divided into four (less often - three) parts. The first - allegro - is the most tense, fast, and most active. In it, the conflict of contradictory feelings most fully reveals the spiritual world of a person. This struggle is difficult to put into words, only music can do it.
Čiurlionis decided to call on painting for help. It is also wordless and sometimes “sounds” like music. The artist conceived the idea of creating pictorial sonatas, building them according to the laws of musical form.
“Sonata of the Sea” is the most famous pictorial suite by Čiurlionis.
The sea powerfully attracted the musician and artist. It amazed his imagination with its power and festive abundance of colors. The life of the waves merged for him with the life of man. Three scenes make up the “Sonata of the Sea” - Allegro, Andante and Finale.
M. K. Ciurlionis Sonata of the Sea 1 part. Allegro. Wide and sweeping, in an even rhythmic ridge, waves advance onto the shore one after another. Permeated by the sun, they sparkle with myriads of transparent bubbles, glowing pieces of amber, rainbow shells, and pebbles. The hilly shore, repeating the contours of the waves, resists their pressure. The white shadow of a seagull falls on the water. She is like an aerial reconnaissance pilot directing the battle between the waves and the shore. No, this is not a battle - rather, a sporting competition between two rival friends. And therefore the mood is joyful and upbeat. It’s as if trumpets sparkling in the sun are playing a vigorous, incendiary march.
M. K. Ciurlionis Sonata of the Sea 2 hours. In Andante, the sea elements calmed down. The waves fell into a deep sleep. The underwater kingdom with sunken ships is also sleeping. But the lamps on the horizon are awake, illuminating the vault of heaven with wide beams. From them, like strings of pearls, two rows of luminous bubbles go down. They lead our gaze into the abyss of the sea with mysteriously blinking lights. And someone’s merciful hand carefully lifts the sailboat from the depths, bringing it back to life. A calm, majestic melody in andante tempo sounds from the painting. It encourages deep thought about the meaning of life, about the inevitable victory of good over the forces of evil.
And finally, the Finale. The elements were in full swing. The sea is boiling and furious. A huge wave with foamy fingers, like the claws of a monster, is ready to absorb, shred, and destroy small boats like insects. Another moment and everything will disappear. The letters ISS, which somehow miraculously appeared on the wave, formed by scraps of foam, will also dissolve. MKS are the artist’s initials, his signature under the paintings - Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (the letter “CH” is spelled “S” in Lithuanian) - The author seems to be saying that by the will of fate he himself found himself in this formidable whirlpool of life, where he is destined to die ...Or maybe not? The wave will not be able to swallow these persistent ships, which seem so helpless in the face of the raging elements, nor will it destroy his name... His creations will survive centuries.
Let’s take a look at the panorama of its grandiose buildings, says the poet Eduardas Meželaitis. - Ciurlionis is a philosopher. First of all, a philosopher who outlined his original views on the Universe with the help of sounds, contours, lines, colors, and poetic images. It is difficult to determine where music ends and painting begins, where painting ends and poetry begins.
