MIKALOJUS KONSTANTINAS ČIURLIONIS – BEYOND HEAVEN AND EARTH

Museum Belvédère is the first museum in the Netherlands to devote a solo exhibition to the work of Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875–1911). There will be a large exhibition "Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis – Beyond Heaven and Earth" from February 24.

Čiurlionis grew to be the most important composer and painter of Lithuania, and to this day he is regarded as a national icon. Art historians couple his name with contemporary artists like Gustav Klimt, Edvard Munch and Wassily Kandinsky. As nearly all his work is in Lithuania and the country became part of the Soviet Union after a short period of independence (1918–1939), Čiurlionis’s art remained unknown in western countries for a long time. The independence of Lithuania in 1990 gave the start to an international reappraisal of Čiurlionis‘s work, with a series of exhibitions in Japan, the United States, Germany, France, Italy, Belgium and England.

The accent of the exhibition "Beyond Heaven and Earth" in Museum Belvédère lies on Čiurlionis‘s later work, painted in tempera, in which he finds a symbiosis between art and music in his entirely personal symbolic style. Nature was his muse, and he was inspired by Lithuanian sagas, fairy tales and popular beliefs on the one hand, and by non-western cultures, varying from Old-Egyptian, Indian to Asiatic cultures on the other hand. The exhibition will present hundred of his works, in which secrets are called up and the earthly world is connected with the supernatural. Čiurlionis‘s work has a unique place in European modern art. Not only because it is so connected with the identity of a country that was suppressed for centuries, but especially because it is absolutely authentic in its approach and themes.

Čiurlionis developed his craft far away from the major European centres of art; he relied completely on his own insights and felt emotionally closely involved with his surroundings. This is exactly the type of artist that Museum Belvédère is interested in – Han Steenbruggen, director Museum Belvédère.