Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vrubel

Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vrubel (born March 5 [March 17, New Style], 1856, Omsk, Russia—died April 1 [April 14], 1910, St. Petersburg) was a Russian painter, sculptor, and draftsman who was a pioneer of Modernism with an original vision. An innovator by nature, Vrubel rejected tradition, but he was out of step with his times. He was misunderstood by his contemporaries, and his life ended tragically. Russian artists of the avant-garde, however, considered him their forefather.

Initially Vrubel followed in his father’s footsteps, graduating with a law degree from the University of St. Petersburg, but then he immediately enrolled in the Academy of Arts (1880). Pavel Chistyakov, a virtuoso draftsman, was his teacher and greatest influence there. From him Vrubel acquired an acute perception of form and its components.

From 1884 to 1889 Vrubel lived in Kiev (now Kyiv, Ukr.), where he studied and worked on the restoration of icons and frescos of St. Cyril’s Church (12th century) and where he also painted a series of murals and icons. Vrubel’s next major project was to work on the murals of St. Vladimir’s Cathedral (1887), but the project went no farther than sketches, and another artist was given the assignment. This circumstance caused Vrubel to leave Kiev for Moscow, where he soon became one of the leading masters. In 1891 he joined the artistic circle of Savva Mamontov, one of Moscow’s foremost art patrons. Mamontov’s circle had considerable interest in folk art and folklore. Under this influence, Vrubel painted a series of works based on themes from Russian folktales and legends, such as Bogatyr (1898) and Pan (1899). He also created some majolica statues. These works, with their bright folkloric decoration, combined the aesthetic elements of Symbolist painting with the style of Art Nouveau, which was then taking root in Russian art.

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During this period, Vrubel also created a series of illustrations for the books of the poet Mikhail Lermontov. Vrubel was especially drawn to Lermontov’s poem “Demon,” finding in it the kind of heroic figure he himself was drawn to—a rebel and a prophet, at once defiant and doomed to a life of utter loneliness. In his illustrations of Lermontov’s works, Vrubel demonstrated his mastery of graphic arts. His dense strokes and his knack for breaking a form into a chaotic mass of facets and planes delighted many later artists, who saw Vrubel as a forerunner of Cubism. The theme of Lermontov’s “Demon” became ubiquitous in Vrubel’s mature works, embodying his personal turmoil and endurance, and he created a cycle of works, including the haunting Seated Demon (1890), and The Demon Cast Down (1902), in which clear autobiographical motifs are manifest.

In 1896 Vrubel painted two decorative panels for the Nizhny Novgorod Fair—Princess Reverie (or Pelléas and Mélisande) and Mikula—but his paintings were rejected. From this point on, Vrubel experienced periodic mental disorder. He reacted irrationally to reviews and also to the comments of people close to him. He often repainted his pictures. In 1902 he suffered a major breakdown, and he spent the final eight years of his life in mental institutions. In moments of sanity (mostly between 1904 and 1905), he painted surprisingly beautiful and unusual works. One of these paintings, The Pearl (1904), is frequently cited as one of the most characteristic paintings of Russian Art Nouveau.