It doesn’t seem right that someone so talented in one discipline should be equally if not more talented in another. But that’s precisely the case with Mikalojus Čiurlionis, a composer of opulent tone poems who also happened to be a major Symbolist painter. Oh yeah, he could write, too. In his 35 years, he managed to compose 400 pieces of music and to create about 300 paintings. This is all the more impressive in that his career basically spanned a single decade.

Čiurlionis was born into a Polish-speaking family in the Lithuanian village of Senoji Varėna on this date in 1875. He studied at the Warsaw Conservatory and then the Warsaw School of Fine Arts.

A passionate figure in the Romantic mold, he lived his life at a fever pitch. He was interested in photography, geology, history, chemistry, geometry, physics, astronomy, astrology, mythology, philosophy, dead and modern languages, and eastern and western religions.

He hurled himself into the Lithuanian national movement. He was the first composer to collect and publish Lithuanian folk music. He organized and participated in the first three exhibitions of Lithuanian artists. He was one of 19 founding members of the Lithuanian Artists Union. He declared to his brother that he intended to dedicate all of his past and future works to Lithuania.

In 1909, he married the art critic Sofija Kymantaitė. Their time together was brief. At the age of 33, Čiurlionis fell into a profound depression and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Marki, northeast of Warsaw. There he contracted pneumonia and died without ever having met his daughter.

Čiurlionis was a synesthete, so that he experienced colors and music simultaneously. A number of his paintings bear musical titles. His music teeters between Romanticism and Modernism, and his paintings between Symbolism and Abstract Expressionism.

Happy birthday to this intense, doomed artist.

Čiurlionis’ tone poem, “The Sea” (1903-1907):

Paintings by Čiurlionis:

http://www.wikiart.org/en/mikalojus-ciurlionis/mode/all-paintings

PHOTO: News (1905)