Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis

Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis
Birth name Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis
Born 22 September 1875(1875-09-22)
Senoji Varėna
Died 10 April 1911(1911-04-10) (aged 35)
Pustelnik (Marki)
Nationality Lithuanian
Field Painting, musical composition
Training Warsaw Conservatory, Leipzig Conservatory, Warsaw School of Fine Arts
Movement Symbolism; Art nouveau
Works Spring Sonata, In the Forest
The Zodiac cycle. Sagittarius (1907)
Sonata of the Sea. Finale (1908)
Creation of the World X (1906-1907)
Building where Čiurlionis died

Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, also known as M. K. Čiurlionis (22 September [O.S. 10 September] 1875 –10 April [O.S. 28 March] 1911) was a Lithuanian painter and composer. Čiurlionis contributed to symbolism and art nouveau and was representative of the fin de siècle epoch. During his short life he composed about 250 pieces of music and created about 300 paintings. The majority of his paintings are housed in the M. K. Čiurlionis National Art Museum in Kaunas, Lithuania. His works have had a profound influence on modern Lithuanian culture. The asteroid 2420 Čiurlionis is named after him.

Contents

Biography

Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis was born in Senoji Varėna, the oldest of nine children of his father, Constantine, and his mother, Adele. In those years many educated Lithuanians spoke Polish instead of Lithuanian. The family Čiurlionis grew up in was no exception, and he only became fluent in the language after meeting his fiance.[1] In 1878 his family moved to Druskininkai, where his father became the town organist. Čiurlionis was a musical prodigy: he could play by ear at age three and could sight-read music freely by age seven. Three years out of primary school, he went to study at the musical school of Prince Michał Oginski where he learned to play several orchestral instruments, in particular the flute, from 1889 to 1893. Čiurlionis studied piano and composition at the Warsaw Conservatory from 1894 to 1899. For his graduation, in 1899, he wrote a cantata for mixed chorus and symphonic orchestra titled De Profundis, with the guidance of the composer Zygmunt Noskowski. Later he attended composition lectures at the Leipzig Conservatory (1901 to 1902), and studied drawing at the Warsaw School of Fine Arts from 1904 to 1906. After the 1905 Russian Revolution, which resulted in the loosening of cultural restrictions on the Empire's minorities, he began to identify himself as a Lithuanian.[1]

He was one of the initiators of, and a participant in, the First Exhibition of Lithuanian Art that took place in 1907 in Vileišis Palace, Vilnius. Soon after this event the Lithuanian Union of Arts was founded, and Čiurlionis was one of its 19 founding members.

In 1907 he came to know Sofija Kymantaitė (1886–1958), an art critic. She taught him to speak good Lithuanian. Early in 1909 he married Sofija. By the end of that year he travelled to St. Petersburg, where he exposed some of his paintings. On Christmas Eve Čiurlionis fell into a profound depression there. In the beginning of 1910 he was hospitalized in a sanatorium in Pustelnik in Marki, northeast of Warsaw. There he died of pneumonia in 1911, 35 years old. He was buried in the Rasos Cemetery in Vilnius. He never saw his daughter Danutė (1910–1995).

Čiurlionis felt that he was a synesthete; that is, he perceived colors and music simultaneously. Many of his paintings bear the names of musical pieces: sonatas, fugues, and preludes.

Posthumous recognition

In 1911 the first posthumous exhibition of Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis's art was held in Vilnius and Kaunas. During the same year an exhibition of his art was held in Moscow, and in 1912 his works were exhibited in St. Petersburg. The National M. K. Čiurlionis School of Art was founded in Vilnius in 1945; soon afterwards the Lithuanian community in Chicago opened the Čiurlionis Art Gallery, hosting collections of his works. In 1963 the Čiurlionis Memorial Museum was opened in Druskininkai, in the house where Čiurlionis and his family lived. This museum holds biographical documents as well as photographs and reproductions of the artist's works.

Čiurlionis inspired the Lithuanian composer Osvaldas Balakauskas' work Sonata of the Mountains (1975), and every four years junior musical performers from Lithuania and neighbouring countries take part in the Čiurlionis Competition. Čiurlionis's name has been given to cliffs in Franz Josef Land, a peak in the Pamir Mountains, and to asteroid #2420, discovered by the Crimean astrophysicist Nikolaj Cernych.

Čiurlionis's works have been displayed at international exhibitions in Japan, Germany, Spain, and elsewhere. His paintings were featured at "Visual Music" fest, an homage to synesthesia that included the works of Wassily Kandinsky, James McNeill Whistler, and Paul Klee, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles in 2005.[2]

Musical works

Some of his most-performed musical works include:

Paintings

The most famous Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis paintings include:

Gallery

Cloud Boat

The Past

Crosses in Žemaitija

Kings' Fairy Tale (1908-1909)

Tranquility (1904-1905)

Preludes and Fugues. Angel. Prelude

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Timothy Snyder (2004). The reconstruction of nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999. Yale University Press. p. 100. ISBN 9780300105865. http://books.google.com/books?id=xSpEynLxJ1MC&pg=PA100&dq=%C4%8Ciurlionis+lithuanian+1905&hl=en&ei=yF58TJiXLMadnAe2tPmWCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCQQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false. 
  2. ↑ Visual Music, 13 February through 22 May 2005, MOCA Grand Avenue

References

External links