Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis

Biography

Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis was born in Senoji Varena, former Russian Empire, the oldest of nine children of his father, Lithuanian Konstantinas, and his mother, Adele nee Radmanaite (Radmann), descended from Evangelic Lutheran German Bavarian family. Like many educated Lithuanians of the time, Ciurlionis's family spoke Polish, and he began learning Lithuanian only after meeting his fiancee in 1907. In 1878 his family moved to Druskininkai, where his father went on to be the town organist.

Ciurlionis was a musical prodigy: he could play by ear at age three and could sight-read music freely by age seven. Three years out of primary school, he went to study at the musical school of Polish Prince Michal Oginski in Plunge where he learned to play several orchestral instruments, in particular the flute, from 1889 to 1893. Supported by Prince Oginski's 'scholarship' Ciurlionis studied piano and composition at Warsaw Conservatory from 1894 to 1899. For his graduation, in 1899, he wrote a cantata for mixed chorus and symphonic orchestra titled De Profundis, with the guidance of the composer Zygmunt Noskowski. Later he attended composition lectures at the Leipzig Conservatory from 1901 to 1902.

He returned to Warsaw in 1902 and studied drawing at the Warsaw School of Fine Arts from 1904 to 1906 and became a friend with a Polish composer and painter Eugeniusz Morawski-Dabrowa. After the 1905 Russian Revolution, which resulted in the loosening of cultural restrictions on the Empire's minorities, he began to identify himself as a Lithuanian.

He was one of the initiators of, and a participant in, the First Exhibition of Lithuanian Art that took place in 1907 in Vileisis Palace, Vilnius. Soon after this event the Lithuanian Union of Arts was founded, and Ciurlionis was one of its 19 founding members.

In 1907 he became acquainted with Sofija Kymantaite (1886–1958), an art critic. Through this association Ciurlionis learned to speak better Lithuanian. Early in 1909 he married Sofija. At the end of that year he traveled to St. Petersburg, where he exhibited some of his paintings. On Christmas Eve Ciurlionis fell into a profound depression and at the beginning of 1910 was hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital "Czerwony Dwor" (Red Manor) in Marki, Poland (now incorporated into Pustelnik), northeast of Warsaw. While a patient there he died of pneumonia in 1911 at 35 years of age. He was buried at the Rasos Cemetery in Vilnius. He never saw his daughter Danute (1910–1995).

Ciurlionis felt that he was a synesthete; that is, he perceived colors and music simultaneously. Many of his paintings bear the names of musical pieces: sonatas, fugues, and preludes.

Posthumous recognition

In 1911 the first posthumous exhibition of Ciurlionis's art was held in Vilnius and Kaunas. During the same year an exhibition of his art was held in Moscow, and in 1912 his works were exhibited in St. Petersburg. In 1957 the Lithuanian community in Chicago opened the Ciurlionis Art Gallery, hosting collections of his works. In 1963 the Ciurlionis Memorial Museum was opened in Druskininkai, in the house where Ciurlionis and his family lived. This museum holds biographical documents as well as photographs and reproductions of the artist's works. The National M. K. Ciurlionis School of Art in Vilnius was named after him in 1965.

Ciurlionis inspired the Lithuanian composer Osvaldas Balakauskas' work Sonata of the Mountains (1975), and every four years junior musical performers from Lithuania and neighbouring countries take part in the Ciurlionis Competition. Ciurlionis's name has been given to cliffs in Franz Josef Land, a peak in the Pamir Mountains, and to asteroid #2420, discovered by the Crimean astrophysicist Nikolaj Cernych.

Ciurlionis's works have been displayed at international exhibitions in Japan, Germany, Spain, and elsewhere. His paintings were featured at "Visual Music" fest, an homage to synesthesia that included the works of Wassily Kandinsky, James McNeill Whistler, and Paul Klee, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles in 2005.

A commemorative plaque has been placed on the building of the former hospital in Marki, Poland where Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis died in 1911.

Ciurlionis's life was depicted in the biographical feature film 'Letters to Sofija' directed by Robert Mullan in 2012. .

Musical works

The precise number of Ciurlionis musical compositions is not known – substantial part of his manuscripts did not survive, while others, assumingly, perished in the fire during the war, or were lost. The ones available for us today include sketches, rough drafts, and fragments of his musical ideas. The nature of the archive determined the fact that Ciurlionis’ works were finally published only hundred years after the composer’s death. Today, the archive amounts to almost 400 music compositions major part of which are works for piano, but also significant opuses for symphony orchestra (symphonic poems In the Forest and The Sea, overture, cantata for choir and orchestra), string quartet, works for various choirs (original compositions and Lithuanian folk song arrangements), as well as works for organ.

Some of his most-performed musical works include:

Paintings

The most famous Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis paintings include:

Gallery