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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 sightread 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