|
Dear Friends,
I guess the time is ripe for featuring Nicholas Roerich
(1874-1947), one of the most prolific and enlightened artists
the world has ever seen. An outstanding character indeed, and
one who very appropriately can be compared to the great
Leonardo, not only was he a great painter, a stage designer and
an inspired author, but he also was an archaeologist, a
philosopher, a famous lecturer and a great traveler who became a
politician and a diplomat in the same spell, a typographer, the
founder of a family of illuminated artists and, most
importantly, one of the most influential religious thinkers of
his time.
Finding about the life and deeds of this great creator of beauty
and of so many other important things has been one of the most
fascinating experiences in my life. However, nothing prepared me
for the amazing fact that all of it has come to me at a stage in
my life when I am deeply engrossed with the New Age phenomenon,
of which he probably was the earliest precursor. An indication
of this can be the fact that he frequently painted inspired
representations of the Buddha Maitreya and of Kalki Avatar, who
according to Buddhists and Hindus alike are supposed to be the
inaugurators of the coming Golden Age after the current evil
state of things has ended on this Earth.
The creator of more than 7,000 works of art, Nicholas Roerich is
most difficult to feature in a single thread. However, I have
finally decided to have him represented by a work of rare beauty
and great mystical depth: his Kalki
Avatar, painted in 1932 (see below), although
I must say that after seeing other works by him, for example his Zoroaster (1931) or
his Elias
the Prophet (1931),
also temperas of outstanding beauty and mystical intent, or his
oil painting The
Messenger (Tribe
Has Risen Against Tribe)(1897),
which earned him an extraordinary reputation as an artist in
Russia - his country - at age 24, I have doubted whether my
choice was the right one.
To list other wonderful masterworks by him would be perhaps
excessive, considering their number and the great quality of
many of them. Let me mention, however, a few ones, mostly
temperas on canvas, that I find especially attractive or simply
masterly: Guests
from Overseas (1901), Mother
of Ghengis Khan (1931,
this one a small tempera on cardboard and a gem), Mountain
of Five Treasures (1933), Star
of the Hero (1933), Tsong-Kha-Pa (1923,
another little gem, this one a drawing), and White
Himalayas(1931).
As always, good
feedback from you will be most welcome.
Thank you,
Luis Miguel Goitizolo
GREAT MASTERS OF
PAINTING
 |
|
Kalki
Avatar (1)
by
Nicholas Roerich
born St
Petersburg,
9 Oct 1874;
died Nagar,
nr Kulu, Himachal
Pradesh, India,
13 Dec 1947.
Profile
(2)
Roerich, Nicholas [Ryorikh,
Nikolay (Konstantinovich)]
Russian painter, stage designer and founder of cultural
institutions. The son of a lawyer of Scandinavian descent, he
graduated from the studio of the landscape painter Arkhip
Kuindzhi at theAcademy of Fine
Arts (1897)
and from the faculty of law at the University of St
Petersburg (1898).
He then studied in Paris with
the history painter Fernand Cormon (1900).
Original Russian Nikolay
Konstantinovich Ryorikh, Ryorikh
also spelled Rerikh (b.
Oct. 9 [Sept. 27, Old Style], 1874,
St. Petersburg, Russia—d.
Dec. 13, 1947, Nagar, India),
Russian scenic designer for Sergey Pavlovich Diaghilev’s Ballets
Russes who
is best-known for his monumental historical sets. He was also a
popular mystic.
Educated at the St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts, he was not
only a scenic designer but also an archaeologist and landscape
painter. Roerich’s paintings evidence an intense feeling for the
epic dimensions and mystery of nature, particularly 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 the 12th-century Russia of
Polovtsian
Dances (1909)
from Aleksandr Borodin’s Prince
Igor or
the legendary Scandinavia of Edvard Grieg’s Peer
Gynt (1912).
In 1920 he emigrated to the United
States,
where he fashioned 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.
In 1930 he befriended Henry
Wallace,
who, after becoming secretary of agriculture in the Franklin D.
Roosevelt administration, sent him on a botanical expedition to
the Gobi desert to determine whether conditions there had
answers forAmerica’s Dust
Bowl.
Ignoring his mission for the most part, Roerich waded into Asian
politics, roaming with a Cossack bodyguard and vainly urging
Buddhist masses to revolution. Wallace broke with Roerich over
these events but not before an exchange of letters demonstrated
both men’s antic views. (In one letter this oracular view of Manchuria was
expressed in fanciful code: “The Monkeys are seeking friendship
with the Rulers so as to divide the land of the Masters between
them. The Wandering One thinks this, and is very suspicious of
Monkeys.”) These so-called “guru letters” came into the
possession of a Pittsburgh newspaper
but, through the efforts of the Rooseveltadministration
in 1940, were suppressed. The first excerpts were not published
until 1948.
Technical data
(3)
Kalki
Avatar, 1932
Tempera on canvas, 61.5 x 96.5
cm,
Bharat Kala
Bhavan, Varnasi, India
|
|
(1) This image is a courtesy of Wikipedia.
(2) Estonian
Roerich Society (Paintings Gallery)
(3) The
Grove Institute of Art, Encyclopedia
Britannica |
|
