Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, The Hymn, 1904–1905 D uring his brief creative career, the ­ Lithuanian artist and composer ­ Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875–1911) produced around four hundred paintings and an equal number of musical works. Čiurlionis stands as a unique figure in European art history. His distinctive talent makes him difficult to classify into any one school; some have called him a symbolist, while others point to his role as a pioneer of abstract art. Čiurlionis’s biography includes striking parallels to the life of Vincent van Gogh. Both artists were driven by an intense search for the transcendent, and both threw themselves with abandon into the quest to express truths that they felt stemmed from a source beyond them. Both collapsed physically and mentally under the immense demands of this creative effort, and both died in their mid-thirties. Čiurlionis began as a musician, attending the conservatories in Warsaw and Leipzig. Despite his achievements as a composer – his works for orchestra, piano, and string quartet are still performed – he developed a growing passion for expressing his visions through painting. In the artworks he produced during the final three years of his life, he sought to portray the underlying and invisible reality of the world rather than merely its surface. Frequent themes include the beauty of the thoughts of the Creator as well as the struggle of two opposing forces in the spiritual realm. Romain Rolland, the French writer and Nobel laureate, sums it up: “There is a continent for the spirit, and Čiurlionis is its Christopher Columbus.”  Vilija Kačergytė-Compy Vilija Kačergytė-Compy, who grew up admiring Čiurlionis’s art in her native Lithuania, is a member of the Bruderhof community in Elka Park, New York. To view more of the artist’s work, see www.ciurlionis.eu. A rt i s t ’s E y e From WikiArt (public domain)