vrubel

 
„El­e­vate the soul by grandiose im­ages be­yond all every­day pet­ti­ness.“
 

Mikhail Vrubel (1856–1910) is one of the most adored Russ­ian painters of the 19th cen­tu­ry.
 

 

 

How­ev­er, such awe came like sun af­ter a storm: Con­ster­na­tion from his con­tem­po­raries – along with overuse of sub­stances – led the artist to in­san­i­ty be­fore he could en­joy his fame.
 

 

Vrubel was al­ways en­chant­ed by aes­thet­ics, pre­fer­ring them over con­cepts and sto­ry-telling in art.
 

 

His works are full of emo­tion­al depth, the most fa­mous se­ries be­ing il­lus­tra­tions of Mikhail Ler­mon­tov’s Russ­ian clas­sic poem De­mon.

 

The sto­ry speaks of the Dev­il, who, in­ca­pable to see any joy in his ex­is­tence any­more, sud­den­ly falls in love with a young bride while he was fly­ing over her wed­ding cel­e­bra­tion.

Af­ter the cru­el mur­der of her fi­ance, the de­mon woos her into pity­ing him, as she gets weak­er for the sad­ness in his eyes and the zeal in his words.

 

Try­ing to es­cape, the woman, Tama­ra, leaves her home for a monastery to pre­serve her chasti­ty, but the se­duc­er finds her there – one kiss kills the naive girl.
 

 

As­cend­ing to Heav­en, her soul is led by an an­gel who does not let her to be tak­en down to hell, the lover los­ing the last thing he trea­sured – she was torn down with his own hands.

 

Mikhail Vrubel kept re­turn­ing to the tale even af­ter his il­lus­tra­tive com­mis­sion was done – the fate of a trou­bled but tru­ly pas­sion­ate en­ti­ty felt fa­mil­iar to his own, in which he al­ways fol­lowed his heart but would de­stroy all the gained with trag­ic ir­re­spon­si­bil­i­ty: Al­co­hol, over-spend­ing and squan­der­ing. In their view, he was psy­chot­ic and ego­is­tic.

 

 

Par­o­dox­i­cal­ly, as Vrubel moved to a hos­pi­tal, the pub­lic saw a trag­ic hero of arts, af­ter years of ridi­cul­ing him for his.

Now his works can be found in the biggest mu­se­ums of Rus­sia, ex­hi­bi­tions fea­tur­ing his cre­ations vis­it­ed by thou­sands of ad­mir­ers.
 

 

 

It’s a shame he was nev­er well-known in oth­er coun­tries.

 

—pur­ples­finx

Flom­mist Veroni­ka Veziro­va, a.k.a. Pur­ples­finx, is an il­lus­tra­tor and graph­ic de­sign­er based in Barcelona. In­spired by cul­ture of all kinds, she writes on top­ics that in­clude art his­to­ry, cre­ativ­i­ty and folk­lore. Her oth­er works in­clude man­ga and psy­che­del­ic po­et­ry. Copy­right © 2022, 23 Veroni­ka Veziro­va.

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