Mikhail Vrubel Paintings by Daniel Coenn

Description

Between realism and dream stands Mikhail Vrubel. Mikhail Vrubel Paintings, curated by Daniel Coenn for the My Pocket Gallery series, gathers the work of Russia’s great Symbolist painter (1856–1910) — a pioneering figure of Russian Symbolism and modernist art whose canvases seem assembled from shards of colored glass.

Trained at the Imperial Academy of Arts under Pavel Chistyakov, Vrubel moved from Byzantine-inspired church murals in Kiev — including the restoration of St. Cyril’s Monastery — to the Moscow of the 1890s, where the patron Savva Mamontov and the Mir iskusstva circle gave his vision room to grow. There he painted the brooding Demon Seated (1890), the haunting Swan Princess (1900), and the tormented Demon Downcast, alongside ceramics, theatrical designs, and decorative panels that made him a master of many media.

Inside this volume:

• A curated selection of Vrubel’s paintings, from the Kiev period to the Moscow years
• The Demon cycle — Seated, Flying, and Downcast — his most famous creations
• The Swan Princess and the fairy-tale world of his late 1890s work
• An annotated guide to the life behind the brushwork, from Omsk to St. Petersburg

For lovers of Symbolism, Art Nouveau, and Russian art, this pocket gallery is the essential introduction to a painter Alexander Blok called a ‘messenger of other worlds.’