Litewska tonacja w twórczości Mikalojusa Konstantinasa Čiurlionisa

Abstract

Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875–1911), the most brilliant of all Lithuania’s artists, went down in the history of European culture as a composer who sought out new paths in music, and as a painter who synthesized painting and music. The depth of his artistic world, the plasticity and mysteriousness of his images, and the originality and subtlety of the artistic forms of both his paintings and his music are such that his oeuvre continues to enchant audiences into the twenty-first century. His greatest contribution to world culture was his painting, which infused the art of painting with music; he actually named the works themselves with musical terms – sonatas, preludes and fugues. His aesthetically subtle and philosophically rich pieces – whether paintings, music, photography or even literary texts – dazzle and intrigue people of culture the world over. In Lithuania the name of this painter also symbolises the quintessence of being Lithuanian. But in the colours of Čiurlionis’s paintings and in the chords of his music there is both subtlety and lyricism, power and energy, openness and a foreboding mystery. All this comes together not in a direct, didactic image, but in the philosophical text of the work. Čiurlionis’s pictures leave considerable space for the viewer’s own thoughts, because the thoughts of the artist himself are free, transparent and visionary.