Čiurlionis

While Nick gave his paper at KUT, I visited the Synagogue (Jewish population in Kaunas = 180) and the M. K. Čiurlionis Museum with Tautvydas Ragulskis.  I was expecting Lithuanian pastoral - forget it.  The art of Čiurlionis (1875-1911) is mystical, thoughtful, detailed, symbolist, wondrously coloured in, firstly, blues and turquoises, and, later, pinks and golds.  His motifs are the crowned king, the angel, flowing rays of light, crowds on roads, tiny flowers and butterflies.  Čiurlionis believed that music and art complimented each other and, after viewing the pictures, Tautvydas and I sat in the Music Hall and listened to his composition 'Forests', in which I seemed to hear the lime-greens, dark-greens and yellows of leaves and trees.  My favourites among his pictures were Rex (1909), Forest and the cycle The Creation of the World.

From The Creation of the World

Check out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikalojus_Konstantinas_Čiurlionis
http://ciurlionis.licejus.lt/index_en.html
http://www.muziejai.lt/Kaunas/ciurlionio_muziejus.en.htm