NB! Until June 9 there is a surcharge of €2,00
24 February - 9 June 2024
Museum Belvédère is the first museum in the Netherlands to dedicate an exhibition to the work of Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875-1911). Čiurlionis is Lithuania's most important composer and visual artist. Art historians compare him to contemporaries such as Gustav Klimt, Edvard Munch and Wassily Kandinsky.
Although the work of Čiurlionis (1875-1911) remained virtually unknown in the west during the years when Lithuania was part of the Soviet Union, many major museums around the world have devoted exhibitions to him in recent decades. In 2024, Museum Belvédère will offer this unique double talent a stage in the Netherlands. The emphasis of the exhibition is on Čiurlionis' later works, painted with tempera paint, in which he finds a symbiosis between visual art and music in his own symbolist style.
At the beginning of the last century, Čiurlionis developed his own symbolic style, drawing on Lithuanian sagas, myths, fairy tales and folk beliefs as well as non-Western cultures, ranging from Ancient Egyptian, Indian to Asian. Using the drawing as a basis, Čiurlionis made many tempera paintings in which secrets are evoked and the earthly world is connected to the supernatural.
Instead of reality – as we (re)know it – he depicted a different world with his work. This depiction of unprecedented images and worlds is a common thread through his work. He was never concerned with abstractions, but with the mentally imaginable.
Would you like a preview? Cultural Platform Shot of Culture has created a lecture about Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis. In this triptych of 3x1 minute, Jip Heijmerink introduces you to the Lithuanian multi-talent and tells you more about his life, art and music.
NB! The lecture is in Dutch.
“Compare it with Norway: suppose you combine painter Edvard Munch and composer Edvard Grieg in one person, then you have a nice idea.”
– Rokas Zubovas (1966), pianist
"[His] images bring to mind A Midsummer Night’s Dream or The Lord of the Rings, while the fantastical cityscapes remind me of the architecture in Game of Thrones or Fritz Lang’s 1927 film Metropolis."
– Kirsty Lang (1962), journalist, Financial Times
(22-09-2022)
"Symbolism is in his blood.”
– Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971), composer
“In this exhibition Čiurlionis invites us all to travel with him between worlds – from the celestial to the earthly, the physical to the spiritual, from music to painting, the fantastical to the real, and from the figurative to the abstract.”
- Kathleen Soriano (1963), curator M. K. Čiurlionis: Between Worlds (09/2022 - 03/2023), Dulwich Picture Gallery, Londen
“Čiurlionis developed his painting far from the major European art centers, relied entirely on his own insights and felt a close, emotional involvement with his environment. It is precisely that type of artist that Museum Belvédère is interested in.”
– Han Steenbruggen, director Museum Belvédère
Thanks to
The exhibition and the book Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis – Beyond Heaven and Earth were created in close collaboration with the M.K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art in Kaunas, Lithuania and were made possible thanks to FB Oranjewoud, the Cultural Fund, the Province of Fryslân, the Municipality of Heerenveen and the central government - the Cultural Heritage Agency has granted an indemnity guarantee on behalf of the Minister of Education, Culture and Science.
Oranje Nassaulaan 12
8448 MT Heerenveen-Oranjewoud
0513-644999
info@museumbelvedere.nl
