Painting. Russian artists. Nikolay Roerich (1874-1947)
Nikolay Konstantinovich Roerich, a popular mystic is
known for his monumental historical sets.
The son of a lawyer of Scandinavian descent he graduated
from the studio of the landscape painter Arkhip Kuindzhi
at the Academy of Fine Arts (1897) and from the Law
Faculty at the University of St Petersburg (1898). Then
he studied in Paris with the history painter Fernand
Cormon (1900). Roerich made a great contribution to
Russian culture. He lectured at the Institute of
Archaeology (1898), he became secretary of the Society
for the Encouragement of the Arts (1901) and director of
its school (1906), he was the first Chairman of the
World of Art Society (1910). The first volume of his
scholarly works was published in Moscow in 1914. As a
painter Roerich exhibited with the Academy from 1897,
World of Art from 1902, the Vienna Secession с 1905, and
the Salon d'Automne in 1906. From 1903 he was a leading
painter of the artistic colony at Talashkino, where he
designed mosaics, friezes, murals and furniture. As a
stage designer he worked for such directors as Nikolay
Yevreinov, Konstantin Stanislavsky and Sergey Diaghilev.
Nikolay Roerich was not only a scenic designer for
Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, but also an archaeologist
and landscape painter. Roerich's paintings evidence an
intense feeling for the epic dimensions and mystery of
prehistoric nature. As a scenic designer Roerich worked
within the conservative tradition of the picture-frame
stage. His outstanding achievements arose out of the
opportunity to create scenic evocations of the past,
such as 12th-century Russia of Polovtsian Dances, of
1909, from Aleksandr Borodin's Prince Igor or the
legendary Scandinavia of Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt, of
1912. Roerich favoured representational images and
shunned abstraction. He ignored the realism of the
Wanderers. The artist blended various techniques - Old
Russian Revival, French Symbolism, Italian pri-mitivism,
as well as Byzantine and Oriental painting - to achieve
the monumental style. His paintings were stylized, with
simplified outlines and the flat areas of colour. He
began work with oil but then turned to pastel and
tempera. In Russia Roerich's painting was shaped by
archaeology, legend and folklore. The Forefathers, of
1911, is a symbolist canvas in muted blue, green, and
yellow tempera. Based on the Slavic legend and inspired
by the northern Russian countryside, it shows an old
Slavic piper surrounded by bears against the background
of hills.
Roerich left Russia in 1917. He worked as an emigre
artist in Finland and Scandinavia (1917-19), and England
(1919-20). In 1920 Roerich emigrated to the United
States, where he gained a reputation as a painter, seer,
guru, and peacenik, especially among the well-to-do, who
provided him funds and even built him museums, one of
which still stands in New York City. Roerich was sent on
an American botanic expedition to the Himalayas
(1924-8). The artist settled at Nagar in the Himalayas
where he founded the Himalayan Research Centre in 1929.
Roerich's Asian paintings reflect his interest in
Eastern philosophy and religion. Tibet, a Symbolist
canvas created in the Himalayas in 1933 in cool blue and
white tempera, represents monastery buildings, Buddhist
stupas and a prayer flag clustered together in the
vortices of snow-white Tibetan mountains. This painting
is full of mystery, antiquity and spirituality.
After seven years of campaigning, Roerich made the
Roerich Pact (1935) - an international treaty for
safeguarding cultural treasures and centres. Roerich's
artistic heritage is vast. He spent his last years
(1936-47) at Nagar, painting Himalayan scenery and
writing.
Literature: Book "Russian art" A.P. Minyar-Belorucheva |
