It was late October 1992. For the first time The All Baltic Ophthalmology meeting, in Kaunas that year, was to be conducted in English. We were some westeners joining, also for the first time. In all, it became a memorable event, to put it mildly.
To me a non-ophthalmology encounter stands out. The day the meeting ended, Saule Kalpokaite suggested a visit to an art museum. She promised something special, and indeed it was; the Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis National Art Museum. Ciurlionis was stunning, like nothing I had seen before. A few examples will be given here. The artist has never been shown in Sweden and attempts to bring some of the paintings here have all failed. Art people of today call MKC unmodern, "irrelevant". At the time he was active, the late 1900th century, he was little understood outside the area and considered not in contact with "time". Time may now have come.
Be that as it may.Either pictures here leave you cold. Or....in which case you are adviced to go to this or this for more. Maybe you want to read the rather professional oevre below, written by no less than VytautasLandsbergis below
Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis is noted for versatile and concentrated embodiment of human creativity. This was predetermined not only by his diverse talent and not only by the fact that the son of organ player in a small Lithuanian town was generously endowed with: musician's and painter's abilities and verbal skills. He was able to sense and percept messages coming from adjacent woods and brooks, from the rapidly varying northern skies and songs echoing in the blue space: he comprehended that those messages embodied goodness to be passed to others and he knew that art was unique. Only means of expression seem to be different but interrelated and may be even universal as for instance a form of a sonata.
Beauty and meaning manifest artistic creativity. Beauty has to be alive and therefore new, it varies and expands its aesthetic domain while meaning is always existential. These ideas are closely interrelated in Ciurlionis' art. Word represented a concept and ringing there, while sound represented an expressed sensation and sign, the same meaning was passed to line and colour. Structure is important here as harmony of a single art assignment - single piece of art, which represents the sign of universal harmony. Ciurlionis shows that beauty of art is totals revealed by the meaning of a work of art and expressive con- tent could be incomprehensible if it is void of the meaning of structure. The world has never been a chaos but a complex of ties, ties between the earth and skies, therefore human existence also represents a part of something, and his creation can be taken for a sign of the great creation. Such is Ciurlionis' art.
Creative work itself involving life and perceived in the Universe had been one of his numerous subjects. This applies to the cycle of paintings ''Creation of the World'' (1905-06) and a symphony poem under the same tittle (started to be composed in the summer of 1907, but, unfortunately unfinished and lost).
The emergence of the world and its existence alongside with a creating, knowing and ruling Spirit - this recurring theme prevails in Ciurlionis art from his early symbolic and spiritual picture ''Thought'' until the magnificent ''Rex'' of the last years of his life. The flashes of wisdom of mankind integrated in a very special way manifest themselves in Ciurlionis world. He was a religious person and at the same time he experencied curiosity to get to the essence of human being by way of different religious and philosophic concepts. One can easily recognise Lithuanian symbols and eternal archetypes of mankind selfknowledge.
On the other hand a very intensive flight of several years enabled the painter approach and form a new insight into numerous possibilities modem art could offer. One can feel abstract, going beyond the boundaries of material, realistic (siurrealistic), non finite, minimal, optic conceptual art in his paintings as well as insight into cosmic philosophy of life at the time when a human being had never experienced a sensation of taking off from the home planet. Historical sensation is not so important here - to identify who was the first painter at the start of XX century that did it better and earlier. Much more important is to state and marvel at the way the archetypic and national art based on the sensation of ancient Lithuanian myth was revealed to future and universality.
The artist had a good knowledge of psychology and individual powers of peculiar influence; he valued sincerity in human relations most of all, therefore he was non-egoistic in his creation, but he thought about a man who perceives creation in a totally nonconformistic way. There are signs of reading direction in Ciurlionis paintings, implicating the glide of glance and thought; specific harmony of their monumental composition and fragile technique is not accidental as well. At a greater distance - in exhibition space - impressive composition of basic light and dark masses and lines dividing space attract in those paintings. At a closer distance one is enslaved by a complicated palette of colours filling the space of a painting with a ryhmic whole of minor lines and forms, symbolic motives and strokes - direct traces of a hand. Such is painter's invitation for a spectator: to come and have a good look, notice and sense, take part in art process. "If one having approached my work experiences a wave of feeling, he will not go away" - Ciurlionis told once his father.
Vytautas Landsbergis