This theme received a po-werful impetus later in Moscow. He also conceived the theme of Demon here and executed the first compositions. He was shaped as maestro in Kyiv or, to be more exact, at St. He came here as a third-year Academy student, with just three or four watercolors and a dozen drawings under his belt. It is not an exaggeration to consider Kyiv the cradle of Vrubel’s painting style. Professor Mykola Murashko, in charge of the entire project, thus recalled his first meeting with Vrubel: “When I tried to bargain with him about the remuneration (‘you are still so young,’ etc.), he objected: ‘I am young in years but mature in mastery.’ Everybody liked Mikhail, and he inspired respect from everyone in our small steam” (from the reminiscences of Mykola Murashko). He was later allowed to lead the team of painters and restorers. In the spring of 1884 Vrubel came to Kyiv to paint four images for the iconostasis of St. He wrote later: “I finally managed to persuade the church’s clergy to give me the right to keep frescoes totally intact, without restoration and additional painting in the altar’s right-hand corner… I took the trouble of finding in Petersburg a talented Academy of Arts student who could execute this commission in Kyiv, staying within the limits of the available scanty funds… I went to the Academy to see my old friend Chistiakov – and the ball comes to the player! Here is the artist! I can’t recommend anybody better, more ta-lented and more suitable to execute your commission” (from the reminiscences of Nikolai Prakhov). Cyril’s Church, came from Kyiv to see him.
After some time, Chistiakov’s old friend Adrian Prakhov, a painter, art historian, connoisseur of Byzantine monumentalism, and the initiator of restoring the semi-ruined St. In 1883, when Vrubel and his fellow students Serov and Derviz competed in watercolor technique, choosing the topic “A female sitter in the Renaissance milieu,” the colleagues gave the palm to Vrubel. So that they know the life’s baneful fireīut let us come back to the springtime of Vrubel’s life, when he, a 24-year-old student at the Imperial Academy of Arts, dreams of “glorifying beauty everywhere.” A pupil of the famous mentor Pavel Chistiakov, Vrubel was totally absorbed into studying the human body. Alexander Blok dedicated, quite aptly, the following dramatic verses to Vrubel:
An analogy to the destiny of Vincent van Gogh involuntarily suggests itself. The master’s oeuvres – not only in the early Kyiv period but also in the twilight of his life – were scornfully rejected: Demon Downcast may be interpreted as spiritual self-portrait of a lonely genius who paid with mental derangement for the exceptional gift of an artist, prophet, and innovator. He was more often misunderstood than accepted. Throughout his short lifetime (1856-1910), Vrubel strove “to waken the souls from the trivia of life by means of majestic images.” He found his own way in a creative dialogue with the Byzantine frescoes of Kyiv, Ravenna, and Venice, and worked out an inimitable, “Vrubel-style,” system of painting. His monumental and, at the same time, fleshly style of religious images in the amazing sketches Ascension, Resurrection, and Lamentation incurred the wrath of the St. With due respect for his teachers Pavel Chistiakov and Ilya Repin, he searched for his own themes and styles. Vrubel embarked on his own artistic journey in the late 19th century, when impressionism was upstaging academism and realism, the Itinerants vied with academicians in Russia, and symbolism was popular in Munich and Vienna. The unique individuality was shaped in Kyiv. Vrubel had already been a mature master when he was invited there.
In 1890 he began to work in Moscow under the auspices of the art patron Savva Mamontov. Mikhail Vrubel lived in Kyiv for a short time, from April 1884 until 1889. Cyril’s Church but also about tendencies in making a city whose traditional values are being ignored by early-21st-century timeservers.
The exhibit “Vrubel and Kyiv” reminds us not only about the genius’s destiny, art, and role in restoring St. The art of Vrubel, as well as Kyiv’s sacred places, are the glory of an ancient city which is losing, under the quick hand of the local authorities, the oldness and charm of its parks, streets, and squares.
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