Vrubel M.A

19. The Writer and Painter, the Musician. Speak on a famous writer, a painter, a musician.

There are a lot of kinds of art. The example of classical art are the masterpieces of painting and sculpture which are admired by people at picture galleries and museums.

One of my favorite painters is Vrubel M.A.

Vrubel was born in Omsk, Russia, in a military lawyer's family. His father was of Polish ancestry (Polish: Wróbel means sparrow). His mother who was Danish died when he was three years old.

From 1864 to 1867 Vrubel lived in Саратов where he studied the artist in Голицын academy of art.In 1874 he graduated from Ришельевскую classic sсhool in Одесса.

His father wanted him to be successful, so he went to the law school in Санкт-Петербург. But he was never interested in law. He graduated with gold medal, and then joined the military service.

In 1880 he entered the Imperial Academy of Arts, like a auditor student where he studied by direction of Pavel Chistyakov. Even in his earliest works, he exhibited great talent for drawing and an uncommonness style and original interpretation of classical themes.

From 1884 to 1889 Vrubel worked in Kiev, he was invited by Professor Andrian Prakhov to restore an ancient frescoes and create new compositions for St. Cyril’s Church, built in the 12th century. Vrubel spent about 18 months in Venice, studing the art of medieval painters and used this experience for creating four icons at St. Cyril’s Church.

Vrubel was an expert at using watercolor and applied this technique to a number of still-life works and portraits. The artist was also greatly interested in literature and drama, he made many graphic interpretations of works by Shakespeare, Lermontov and Pushkin. He made some illustrations for Hamlet and Anna Karenina which had little in common with his later Demon and Prophet themes.

Про Савву Мамонтова.

It is the large painting of Seated Demon (1890) that brought notoriety(дурная слава) to Vrubel. Most conservative critics accused him of "wild ugliness", whereas the art patron Savva Mamontov praised the Demon series as "fascinating symphonies of a genius" and commissioned Vrubel to paint decorations for his private opera and mansions of his friends. Unfortunately the Demon, like other Vrubel's works, doesn't look as it did when it was painted, as the artist added bronze powder to his oils in order to achieve particularly luminous, glistening effects.

During 1896, he met the famous opera singer Надежда Забела. Half a year later they married and settled in Moscow, where Zabela was invited by Mamontov to perform in his private opera theatre. While in Moscow, Vrubel designed stage sets and costumes for his wife, who sang the parts of the the Swan Princess. Using Russian fairy tales, he executed some of his most acclaimed pieces, including The Swan Princess (1900), Pan (1899).

Mikhail Vrubel’s emotional state was always worrying; he suffered from mood swings, and was often irritable and overexcited. But in 1901 the artist’s mental health worsened and doctors concluded that his illness was not curable. Still, Vrubel kept working and in 1902 he finished his famous painting “Demon Downcast.” Mikhail Vrubel was absolutely obsessed with this work and even when the painting was already in an exhibition hall in Saint Petersburg, he kept changing the image of the demon daily, up to forty times a day.

The death of his young son in 1903 was a new blow for the artist and from that moment Mikhail Vrubel spent most of his time in mental clinics. Vrubel’s health, as reported, was ruined by tertiary syphilis. He gradually lost his eyesight and created his last work, a portrait of Valery Bryusov, when he was almost blind.

In 1901, Vrubel returned to the demonic themes in the large canvas Demon Downcast. In order to astound the public with a spiritual message, he repeatedly repainted the demon's ominous face, even after the painting had been exhibited to the overwhelmed audience by it`s oppressive colorurs. At the end he had a severe nervous breakdown and was hospitalized in a mental clinic. While there, he painted a mystical Pearl Oyster (1904) and variations on the themes of Alexander Pushkin's poem The Prophet. In 1906, acute condition [acute attack] of disease and approaching blindness, he ceased (перестал) painting. Vrubel died on April 14, 1910.