DOI issue:
No. 325 (April 1920)
DOI article:Jarintzov, Nadine: A Russian painter: N. K. Roerich
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21360#0070
A RUSSIAN PAINTER : N. K. ROERICH
“ THE IDOLS" ("PAGAN RUSSIA”
SERIES). BY NICOLAS ROERICH
paintings are stately, sonorous, unhurried
—untranslatable in their ancient poesy.
His essays on ancient Russia unfold a
panorama that makes you hold your breath.
If Russia herself (instead of the Bolsheviks)
offered him all the opportunities for the
application of his gifts—he might reju-
venate the exhausted country by reimbuing
her with the charms of her own youth ! a
Russia has absorbed the elements of
beauty from all who ever crossed her
land, not only from the hired Scandi-
navian princes and warriors, from their
reckless highwaymen and merchants, from
the Byzantine missionaries and the Asiatic
caravans, but even from her oppressors
the Tartars. All these elements became
64
blended in the mind of the unsophisticated
Russian with the clarity of his primitive
conceptions, i.e. with that clarity which
is the more striking the more mystical
the object of the idea would seem to be.
It is this very clarity, this simplicity of
greatness, that is reflected in Roerich's
works. & a a & a
Roerich was born in 1874. From 1893
to 1897 he was student at the Petrograd
University, and at the same time at the
Academy, in Professor Kuindji's class. In
1915 Russia celebrated the twenty-fifth
anniversary of the Academician's artistic
activity. Long before that time he was
the first President of the society or group
called 44 The World of Art," amongst the
“ THE IDOLS" ("PAGAN RUSSIA”
SERIES). BY NICOLAS ROERICH
paintings are stately, sonorous, unhurried
—untranslatable in their ancient poesy.
His essays on ancient Russia unfold a
panorama that makes you hold your breath.
If Russia herself (instead of the Bolsheviks)
offered him all the opportunities for the
application of his gifts—he might reju-
venate the exhausted country by reimbuing
her with the charms of her own youth ! a
Russia has absorbed the elements of
beauty from all who ever crossed her
land, not only from the hired Scandi-
navian princes and warriors, from their
reckless highwaymen and merchants, from
the Byzantine missionaries and the Asiatic
caravans, but even from her oppressors
the Tartars. All these elements became
64
blended in the mind of the unsophisticated
Russian with the clarity of his primitive
conceptions, i.e. with that clarity which
is the more striking the more mystical
the object of the idea would seem to be.
It is this very clarity, this simplicity of
greatness, that is reflected in Roerich's
works. & a a & a
Roerich was born in 1874. From 1893
to 1897 he was student at the Petrograd
University, and at the same time at the
Academy, in Professor Kuindji's class. In
1915 Russia celebrated the twenty-fifth
anniversary of the Academician's artistic
activity. Long before that time he was
the first President of the society or group
called 44 The World of Art," amongst the