Secrets Of The Walls- Nicholas Roerich Painting – Landscape Art

Nicholas Roerich was the first Russian representative of that simplified style developed by Manet, Gauguin and Van Gogh which led to a new spatial and atmospheric probability by means of an intensive line and colour which in its turn evoked responses never possible in earlier art.   Nicholas Roerich made a deep and intimate study of the rocks and mountains of the inner Himalayas, and his Himalayan landscapes reveal unearthly beauty and grandeur. His colour may appear exaggerated to the people who live in the dusty plains, but those who have had an opportunity of traveling in high altitudes know what brilliant colours can be seen there at dawn and at sunset.   Nicholas Roerich is not an ordinary landscape artist. It is nature strained through a fine consciousness, one that we find revealed in his paintings. His mountain pictures have solitary figures of lamas, sadhus or hillmen standing before snow-covered peaks, symbolizing the insignificance of man before the mighty forces of nature. These landscapes are not merely records of places, but a means of recording the sense of grandeur and exaltation which the artist felt looking at these mountains… In the quiet of Naggar, Nicholas Roerich led a creative life, pervaded by spiritual understanding and harmony.

Nicholas Roerich known also as Nikolai Konstantinovich Rerikh– was a Russian painter, writer, archaeologist, theosophist, perceived by some in Russia as an enlightener, philosopher, and public figure, who in his youth was influenced by a movement in Russian society around the spiritual.   Nicholas was interested in hypnosis and other spiritual practices and his paintings are said to have hypnotic expression. Born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, to a well-to-do notary public father of Baltic German ancestry and a Russian mother, he lived in various places around the world until his death in Naggar, Himachal Pradesh, India. Trained as an artist and a lawyer, his main interests were literature, philosophy, archaeology, and especially art.   Roerich was a dedicated activist for the cause of preserving art and architecture during times of war. He earned several nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize long list. The so-called Roerich Pact was signed into law by the United States and most nations of the Pan-American Union in April 1935.