Description of the picture:
Demon sitting – Mikhail Alexandrovich Vrubel. Canvas, oil. 116.5×213.8
The largest representative of symbolism and Art Nouveau in Russian fine art, M. A. Vrubel (1856-1910) was a universal artist who created easel paintings and monumental paintings, an excellent draftsman and sculptor, worked a lot in the field of decorative and applied art. The main theme of Vrubel’s work in the “Moscow period” was the theme of the Demon.
Background for paintings “Demon sitting” a glowing purple low sky serves. Unknown crystal flowers of various dark shades bloom behind the Demon’s back. The heavy athletic muscles of his naked torso are strained, and the clasped fingers give out piercing longing. Black lines of eyebrows are menacingly raised upwards and the corners of the mouth on his swarthy face are bitterly lowered. The combination of power and powerlessness of the young giant echoes the shimmering beauty of the dead landscape surrounding it, in which there are only bizarre spiky rocks and stone clouds. The demon, immersed in longing for a living world full of flowering and warmth, from which he is torn away, does not notice how a golden dawn flares up behind him.
Benoit later recalled that Vrubel continued to work on the image of a demon even after the opening of the exhibition. According to him, under the brush of Vrubel, the demon changed his appearance before his eyes, and this gave the impression of a real confrontation between the artist-creator and the fallen angel."