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by Lyubov Kuznetsova
In 1897, right from an exhibition, featuring St.Petersburg's Art Academy pupils, Nikolai Rerikh's picture "The Messenger" was sent to Moscow, where art collector and patron Pavel Tretyakov bought it for his renowned gallery. The 23-year-old painter got praise from Ilya Repin himself and was received by Russia's major influence, writer Leo Tolstoy. That was how Nikolai Rerikh started out in art. He was not only a painter but also a traveler, a scientist, a writer, a philosopher, a public figure, the head of the family that contributed worthily to world culture.
Over his long life (1874 - 1947), Nikolai Rerikh drew about 7,000 pictures. He also painted churches, made mosaics, frescoes, and sceneries. He penned several research volumes on philosophy, religion, ethnography, archeology, history, poems and short stories. He founded museums, educational establishments and scientific societies for spreading the ideas of peace and intellectually advancing man. Perhaps, his way of life, too, in particular, the last decades he spent in India, was also a cultural action of its kind. Rerikh created his special world, in which East and West were bound together.
Nikolai Rerikh's childhood and adolescence can be called happy without reservations. They are the roots of his world outlook that emerged decades since then: the world is filled with light, with the joy of creation, with beauty, and man should intellectually advance in it. Rerikh grew up in St.Petersburg in an intellectual, well-to-do family. He received a wonderful education first at a gymnasium, then, on father's insistence, at university's law department and simultaneously, by his calling, at the Arts Academy. Purposefully and methodically, he was learning painting skills at the famous landscapist Arkhip Kuindzhi's studio. He admired master Ilya Repin and could spent hours at Viktor Vasnetsov's pictures, inspired by Russian fairy tales and legends. At the same time, he listened to lectures on history and philology. Phenomenal memory helped him to digest such a huge amount of information. Everything he had once read or heard he remembered forever. Even then, his business approach shaped up: no amateurism, professionalism in everything. He fell for archeology and spent much time at excavations. His research in the field has lost none of its significance today. Depicted with maximum precision in his drawings and pictures is the coat of arms on the costume and gun of a Viking or an old Russian.
Even as a young man, Rerikh was a real connoisseur of the old Slavic art; this theme keynotes his painting, poetry, and articles. Rerikh loved the nature of Russia's North. His landscapes are extraordinary. Drawing pines, boulders, or lake banks, he could leave on the canvass something elusive, which immediately allows to identify a landscape with a different epoch and imagine the mysterious primeval nature of long time ago.
Alexander Skryabin, Edvard Grieg, and Richard Wagner were the composers Rerikh loved best. He worked with tremendous enthusiasm on the scenery for Wagner's operas Valkiria and Tristan and Isolda. He was also the author of scenic decorations for Russian operas - Prince Igor by Alexander Borodin, Pskovityanka, Snow Maiden, and Sadko by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Great success accompanied Igor Stravinsky's ballet "The Holy Spring" in Paris in 1913. Not only Rerikh made the scenery but he wrote the libretto then, too. It was one of the sensational premieres by the noted Russian impresario Dyagilev's troupe, which opened Russian ballet to the world.
Nikolai Rerikh had a good sense of time. What he did for the stage was artistically significant, contemporary, and innovative for the then spectator. He was the author of scenery for plays by Maurice Meterlink, Henrik Ibsen, and Russian drama classic Alexander Ostrovsky. Many theater works turned out to be completely independent and finished pictures that still decorate museums and private collections across the world.
Rerikh's quality to paint without corrections, take up the brush when the design is ripe in full, is crucial to the understanding of his nature. The rational approach to work enabled him to achieve a huge lot. This quality is above all that of a scientist. In general, Rerikh's two pursuits - of an artist and of a thinker - contradicted each other at times. Alexander Benua, his gymnasium form-mate and a colleague in the World of Art association, believed that Rerikh's activity outside painting was detrimental to his talent. But Rerikh chose such a special way himself and saw it through with dignity.
After the 1917 revolution, Nikolai Rerikh lived outside Russia. He travelled scores of countries. His exhibitions gathered crowds of admirers in Britain, Sweden, and Americas. In New York, he founded a Rerikh Museum, still functioning today. With his family, he made a grandiose tour of Asia, lasting for more than a year. Eventually, he settled down in India for good. The Kulu Valley at West Himalayas was considered in ancient Indian sources the gate to Shambaly, a sacred land of gurus. Legends about it were recorded by Rerikh during his wanderings across Asia. According to them, the land has a collection of manuscripts of all times and nations and scientific labs, staffed with enlightened creatures, who have left humanity for a whole epoch. The magic stone of happiness - a gift from the Orion constellation - is kept in a many-tier tower. By sagas, Shambala is the place where the Earth links with Space. One can get there only if Shambala itself desires him there. Apparently, Rerikh believed that Shambala was real and the way there lied through man's spiritual self-perfection. And he sought that ideal himself by studying books by Indian philosophers and Tibetian lamas and by leading an ascetic, fully laborious life. He painted Himalaya landscapes and portrayed Buddha, Tibetian heroes and saints. Local residents felt a special aura about him. Some claimed they saw a mysterious glow over Rerikh's house at night. Others said that a cast was spelled, protecting him from bullets and enabling him to cure people and animate faded plants by merely glancing at them. There were bizarre rumors about his wife, a translator and an expert on Buddha literature. She was thought to be a sister to the Russian tzar. Some even regarded the family members as American spies. Rerikh's house at the Nigar settlement attracted many people. It was visited by Javaharlal Nerhu, his daughter Indira Gandhi, scientists, writers, politicians. The guests admired the rich collection of artifacts, brought from Asian countries, and the pictures drawn by the host and his son Svyatoslav. Many Indians called Nikolai Rerikh a guru.
Nikolai Rerikh believed that India and Russia were like two parts of a future country of light and happiness. In the Rerikhs family itself, Russian and Indian intertwined in a peculiar way. An eastern philosophy connoisseur, Yelena Rerikh was an ancestor of great Russian military leader Mikhail Kutuzov and composer Modest Musorgsky. The wife of the junior son Svyatoslav, film actress Devika Rani was kin to writer Rabindranat Tagor. An artist and public figure, Svyatoslav has worked for the benefit of the two countries. An orientalist and a polyglot, speaking more than 30 European and Asian languages, the senior son Yuri has made a valuable contribution to the Indian and Russian historical science.
The Rerikhs jubilee events will be held in Moscow at the Oriental Arts Museum and at the International Rerikh Center, where a jubilee exhibition has been opened. Art experts, orientalists, and philosophers from various countries will gather for an international scientific countries. Russia's first monument to Rerikhs will be unveiled. Standing at the high pedestal will be two figures in bronze: Nikolai and Yelena Rerikhs with an open book, a symbol of wisdom and knowledge, between them.
 
 
 

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