Friday, November 30, 2012

Yuri Gagarin and Nicholas Roerich.

Yuri Gagarin, a personal hero, apparently commented on one of my favourite artists, saying:

"Rays were blazing through the atmosphere of the earth, the horizon became bright orange, gradually passing into all the colors of the rainbow: from light blue to dark blue, to violet and then to black. What an indescribable gamut of colors! Just like the paintings of the artist Nicholas Roerich."
- Statement of April 1961, as quoted in Warrior of Light : The Life of Nicholas Roerich : Artist, Himalayan explorer and visionary (2002) by Colleen Messina, p. 46

Nicholas Roerich was a Russian painter and philosopher who settled for the latter part of his life at Naggar, near Kullu-Manali and who painted the Himalayas and Mongolia and Tibet in all their glory and various moods. The mountains that he painted are grand and mysterious, and colourful - reds and pinks and blues and all other shades and hues so that if one were to go only up till the Inner Himalayas and not travel through the Greater Himalayas, it would be easy to think that Roerich's paintings are artistic license. It was only when travelling from Manali to Leh that I first realised that mountains can take on shades of the sun and the sky and be, proverbially, "purple-headed".

I don't know if the Gagarin quote is an apocryphal story - the only source for it seems to be from Roerich related links and nothing from the Gagarin ones. But it adds just one more layer to understanding Roerich's paintings. And the earth.

Kanchenjunga. 1936
Tempera on canvas. 60.5 x 99 cm. Nicholas Roerich Museum, New York

Krishna. From “Kulu” series. 1929
Tempera on canvas. 74 x 118 cm. Nicholas Roerich Museum, New York
Mount of Five Treasures (Two Worlds).
From “Holy Mountains” series. 1933
Path to Kailas. From “Holy Mountains” series. 1933
Tempera on canvas. 46.5 x 79 cm. Nicholas Roerich Museum, New York

Tent Mountain. From “Holy Mountains” series. 1933
Tempera on canvas. 46.5 x 78.5 cm. Nicholas Roerich Museum, New York
Wular Lake. From “Lakes and Gilgit Path” series. 1925
Tempera and charcoal on paper mounted on cardboard. 25 x 35.5 cm
Private collection, New York 
Pir Panjal. From the series of the same title. 1925
Tempera on canvas mounted on cardboard. 65.5 x 98 cm. Private collection, New York
Temple of Naggar. From “Kulu” series. 1929
Tempera on canvas. 74.5 x 118 cm. Private collection, USA
Himalayas. From “Holy Mountains” series. 1933
Tempera on canvas. 47 x 79 cm. State Museum of Oriental Art, Moscow
Himalayas
1944. Tempera on board. 28 x 44 cmMuseum of Oriental Art, Moscow
Himalayas
1938. Tempera on board. 28 x 44 cm Museum of Oriental Art, Moscow

Nicholas Roerich. The Hunt.
1937. Tempera on canvas. 45,5 x 78,4.
State Museum of Oriental Arts, Moscow, Russia.

Nicholas Roerich. Ice Sphynx.
1938. Oil on canvas. 48,6 х 78,8.
Museum by name of Nicholas Roerich, ICR, Moscow, Russia.
Paintings sourced from:
  • http://www.tanais.info/art/en/roerich.html
  • http://www.roerich.org/
  • http://www.roerich.ru/index.php?r=1280&l=eng

No comments:

Post a Comment