Mikhail Vrubel

Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vrubel (Russian: Михаил Александрович Врубель; March 17, [O.S. March 5] 1856 – April 14, [O.S. April 1] 1910) was a Russian painter, draughtsman, and sculptor. A prolific and innovative master in various media such as painting, drawing, decorative sculpture, and theatrical art, Vrubel is generally characterized as one of the most important artists in Russian symbolist tradition and a pioneering figure of Modernist art.

In a 1990 biography of Vrubel, the Soviet art historian Nina Dmitrieva [ru] considered his life and art as a three-act drama with prologue and epilogue, while the transition between acts was rapid and unexpected. The "Prologue" refers to his earlier years of studying and choosing a career path. The "first act" peaked in the 1880s when Vrubel was studying at the Imperial Academy of Arts and then moved to Kiev to study Byzantine and Christian art. The "second act" corresponded to the so-called "Moscow period" that started in 1890 with The Demon Seated, followed by Vrubel's 1896 marriage to the opera singer Nadezhda Zabela-Vrubel, his longtime sitter, and ended in 1902 with The Demon Downcast and the subsequent hospitalization of the artist. The "third act" lasted from 1903 to 1906 when Vrubel was suffering from his mental illness that gradually undermined his physical and intellectual capabilities. For the last four years of his life, already being blind, Vrubel lived only physically.