Nicholas Roerich – the great artist of Russia, endowed with a special artistic vision and awareness of the world. Roerich’s picturesque canvases, like many of his literary and other creative works, are distinguished by the originality of ideas and the exclusivity of the incarnation of such extraordinary ideas of the author.
The main motives of the artist’s work include the following: the motives of the sky, clouds, mountains, oriental nature, holy places, holy images, images of the Mother of the World, and many more. others
Roerich’s creative style is also distinguished by his love for the Motherland and its history. The artist was deeply interested in such key images-symbols of Russian culture, such as: national heroes, knights, heroes, healers, great generals, warriors, and more. etc. One of such “great” images was embodied by N. K. Roerich in the work “Mikula Selyaninovich”. The painting was painted in 1910. The picture is based on the epic story, based on the great epic character of Mikula Selyaninovich.
The work is written in the technique of tempera painting. From the beginning of the twentieth century, Roerich switched from the use of oil paints to tempera. Such a transition to a new creative material is dictated by the fact that tempera creates images that are more pure in tone and does not darken with time. Meanwhile, Roerich often experiments, using new author’s compositions of paints, carries out experiments with tempera paints on a different basis.
The painting “Mikula Selyaninovich” is stored in the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. The work is included in a single large-scale work-suite “The Bogatyr Frieze”. The Bogatyr Frieze is a series of nineteen decorative canvases. The whole image of the suite can be seen in the Petersburg Russian Museum. The central image of the hero, Mikula Selyaninovich, is a collective image in which the spirit and strength of the Russian people are embodied.
The image of the epic hero is simple and inconspicuous at first glance, however, it represents the real power of the nation. The image turned out to be large, powerful, captured in the vast expanses of the ancient land. The picture is written with a predominance of bluish, cool, air-bearing and fresh colors. The image of the great plowman is precisely covered with this multifaceted depth of blue shades. He exudes the warmth of the worker, the warmth of the creator, the creator of a new, more beautiful life, full of beauty and greatness of spirit. The earth itself, like countless turbulent waves, is parted in front of Mikula by a new world, whose expanses are endless and holy.
Thus, the work of Roerich “Mikula Selyaninovich” personifies the breadth of the spirit of the Russian people, its great strength, patience and perseverance. The picture resembles a fabulous epic illustration, which draws before us a beautiful world, pure, iridescent with lines and color forms, where the wind sounds, like the soul of nature itself, submitting to the powerful will of the Russian people.
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