Nicolás Roerich
Figure less known in Spain of what it deserves, Nicolás Roerich (Saint Petersburg, 1874 – Kullu, 1947) is one of these anxious men who along his life touch all the sticks: archaeologist, traveler, writer, painter, theatrical designer and, over everything, a mystic and idealist capable of covering Asia for years in search of the shanty town of Shambhala, one of these myths which real existence, like that of the Atlantis, could never have demonstrated (click in the photos to enlarge).
Member of the high society of the tsarist Russia, Roerich studied Right for desire of his father and Fine arts for proper vocation. In 1901 he marries Helena Ivanovna, daughter of an archduke, who along his life would be his faithful partner and together they travel round the whole Europe. After the Russian revolution they settle in Finland, country that inspires in Roerich a long series of pictures. In 1920 it moves to the United States invited by the Chicago Art Institute and there it exhibits 400 linens. In 1921, in New York, it founds the Master's degree Institute of United Arts, in which it tries to put into practice his idea of teaching together all the arts: painting, music, singing, dance, theater, ceramics, pottery, drawing … Roerich not only keeps on doing, but also he writes a collection of sixty four poems in free poem that were published in Berlin, in Russian, under the title of Flowers of Morya, and in English like Flame in Chalice (The flame in the chalice).
In 1923 Roerich, with his wife and his son, comes to the India, moves to Sikkim, on the foot of the Himalayas, and initiates a trip of exploration that takes him up to the Chinese Turquestán, Altai, Mongolia and Tibet. The chronicle of this trip The Heart of Asia is gathered in his book. Roerich is the traveler's perfect example in which the exterior trip goes in parallel with the interior, since the said work is, on one hand, a classic book of trips, where sceneries and geographical features are described, there are counted anecdotes and customs of the peoples that are visited and there are narrated the penuries of the travelers, like the heat of the desert of Taklamakán, the absence of oxygen owed at a height of the step of Karakorum, the winds frozen in the Tibetan steppes or the attacks of Tartar bandits; but also in the history there is always present the mythical Shambhala as an invisible city that was appearing and disappearing between the fog, and that does the times of an axis about which turns in spiral the life and whose center the traveler will never manage to reach.
During this trip, which lasts 5 years, Roerich paints 500 linens. These Asian paintings - that inspired between others H.P. Lovecraft - is the most celebrated: they represent the grandeur of the nature of the places that it covered: inaccessible mountains, immense skies, the bluish target of the snow, the orange and red tones of the sun and the purple shades. And from these sceneries there arise sometimes figures of legendary warriors and of solitary personages, philosophers, muds and even gods. Just as in his texts, the interior and the exterior of the human being they are reflected in the paintings. “If one try to paint the Himalayas having face the Alps, something will be missing, imponderable but really“, wrote Nicolás Roerich.
On return from this trip the Roerich they settle definitely in Kullu (India), on the foot of the Himalayas. On the following year, Nicolás Roerich travels to New York, where he proposes the use of the called Flag of the Peace, symbol designed by itself, to protect the cultural goods in case of war. In many of his philosophical and artistic expositions, Roerich went moved forward to his time and hour is of discovering it. His 7.000 paintings are distributed today in 250 museums, the principal one is Nicholas Roerich Museum of New York.
Other places with works of N.R.:
Wikio
Of everything it q big gentleman one is said that I am afraid that they leave a gap in the death of this one. would they have the gentleness of saying something to me on this matter? thank you
Nicholas Roerich died in Kullu (India) on December 13, 1947. His body was incinerated and his ashes were buried in a hillside opposite to the mountains of the Himalayas.
Nicolás Roerich, the Teacher M. and the Reincarnations of the Followers
This is a topic that has always attracted attention of me, in the related thing to the life and work of big mystic, who us has left a legacy extraoprdinario in his contribution to the whole humanity.
I would like talking about this matter of a sincere way and without prejudices, since I am sure that his soul must being already personified, to the service of a cause similar to which he lived in his past life.
Thank you very much, because this way it is possible to go deep much more into this interesting topic of the human spirituality for the whole world.
[...] where the streets writhe to locate small houses, us dirijimos straight to the house of Nicolás Roerich, it has turned into museum and they keep his numerous paintings, Roerich was a recognized one [...]