Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis

1875 - 1911

• Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis was born on the 22d of September 1875 in Senoji Varena, the oldest of nine children of his father, Konstantinas, and his mother, Adelė.

• He was a Lithuanian painter and composer.

• During his short life he composed about 250 pieces of music and created about 300 paintings.

• Čiurlionis contributed to symbolism and art nouveau.

• He used coloured chalk to create his paintings. That’s why it is very difficult for them to be moved.

• You can see the originals in Vilnius and Druskininkai.

• In 1878 his family moved to Druskininkai, where his father went on to be the town organist. Čiurlionis 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 Prince Michal Oginski where he learned to play several orchestral instruments, in particular the flute, from 1889 to 1893. Supported by Prince Ogiński's 'scholarship' Čiurlionis studied piano and composition at the Warsaw Conservatory from 1894 to 1899.

• . Later he attended composition lectures at theLeipzig Conservatory (1901 to 1902), and studied drawing at the Warsaw School of Fine Arts from 1904 to 1906

• In 1907 he became acquainted with Sofija Kymantaitė (1886–1958), an art critic.

• 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 Čiurlionis fell into a profound depression and at the beginning of 1910 was hospitalized in a sanatorium called „Czerwony Dwór" (Red Manor) in Pustelnik( now Marki), northeast of Warsaw.

• While a patient there he died of pneumonia in 1911 at 35 years of age. He was buried at the Rasos Cemetry in Vilnius.

• He never saw his daughter Danutė (1910–1995).

• In 1963 the Čiurlionis Memorial Museum was opened in Druskininkai, in the house where Čiurlionis and his family lived.

• This museum holds biographical documents as well as photographs and reproductions of the artist's works.

• Čiurlionis’s works have got a synthetic character: that is, he perceived colours and music simultaneously.

• Many of his paintings bear the names of musical pieces: sonatas, fugues, and preludes.

MEMORY

• Čiurlionis'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 Nikolai Cernych