Tragedy of a painter's artist's life

The painter Mikhail Vrubel was always immersed in a nightmare so his works always had the appearance of a devil with incredible dreams.

For many, Mikhail Vrubel is one of Russia's famous painters. Throughout his life, he not only produced many valuable works of art, but also left mankind mysteriously with no answer to evil images in haunting paintings.

Special talents and early life misfortunes

Vrubel was born in Russia to a family of traditional lawyers. His father was of Polish origin while his mother was Danish, but unfortunately Vrubel was orphaned when he was 3 years old.

Although he graduated from the Faculty of Law at Saint Petersburg University in 1880 but with a passion for painting, he entered the Royal Academy of Art - where he was educated under the famous painter at that time - Pavel Chistyakov. Immediately, Vrubel showed great artistic talent with drawings that had a very personal style and personality.

Self-portrait of Mikhail Vrubel, 1882

Later, Vrubel was introduced as a partner for Professor Adrian Prakhov in Kiev. Here, he learned a lot of interesting painting knowledge but was also badly involved in the affair with the wife of Professor Prakhov - beautiful Emilia Lvovna.

Not only does she have a nice appearance, Emilia is also a scholar of painting and social knowledge, so Vrubel loves Emilia very much. Unfortunately, she was Prakhov's wife, which made Vrubel very miserable, even though he kept his distance but he silently observed Emilia and painted her many beautiful paintings.

Finally, Professor Prakhov also recognized his wife being loved by the young painter. The professor was very upset and asked his students to go to Italy to study the works of the classical masters.

The 1884 'Mother of the Virgin and the Divine Comedy' is the mother and daughter of Emilia

Knowing it was impossible to continue this unrequited love, Vrubel left to seek new creative inspiration. During this time, he constantly produced paintings of the Virgin Mary, but oddly enough, the face in the picture was identical to Emilia - whom Vrubel secretly missed.

Some time later, Vrubel returned to Kiev again to participate in decorating the works of the Cathedral of Vladimir. He accidentally met Professor Prakhov - the master of the cathedral.

Prakhov does not hide the aversion to former students and the relationship between the two is quite stressful. Works are allocated to everyone but the list is not named Vrubel. So depressed, Vrubel left the city and from here, the darkest things began to happen to him.

Mysterious dream and lucky marriage

Career failures and unrequited love make Vrubel's spirit go down seriously. Not knowing when, the venerable painter was constantly obsessed with terrible nightmares. In the dream, he always sees ghosts in hell. They often come in sleepy sleeps, startling him, suddenly waking up at midnight.

Vrubel has shown what he saw in his dream of painting and these works not only impressed by strange themes and materials but also in harmonious composition, unique colors, full of dreams.

More interestingly, the main characters in the Vrubel paintings are mostly scary images of Satan. This image is in stark contrast to previous religious paintings of peace.

Flight of Faust and Mephisto, 1896

Over time, Mikhail Vrubel was always immersed in a bad emotional state. He was irritable and excited too much, and at times, Vrubel was blatantly angry with the people around him.

Many rumors appeared and said that Vrubel was possessed by demons that made painters increasingly sad. It was not until Vrubel met and fell in love with the female singer Nadezhda Zabela in 1895 that everything returned to normal.

After the marriage ceremony, Vrubel returned to his fun, following his lover on tour and taking on the curtain decoration, drawing costumes for the characters Nadezhda played.

Picture of Princess Swan, 1900

The passionate love quickly helped Vrubel heal the evil nightmare. He found a new creative direction based on his love for his wife and produced highly appreciated works such as: Princess Greda, the Swan Queen .

The demon comes back .

But in 1898, horrible dreams came to Vrubel. During his sleep, Vrubel sees the strange images of the year - Satanic demons, gloomy terrorism, hell, ghosts of the dead .

He became more anxious and depressed for many consecutive nights. Vrubel is mostly awake at night, his temperament is also dizzying, from soft, gentle, generous, now Vrubel becomes rigid, likes to be born. When people criticize their ghost paintings, Vrubel immediately gets angry and curses the person badly.

Picture of Vrubel's wife - Nedezhda Zabela

Nedezhda Zabela was horrified by her husband's personality and completely believed, Vrubel was insane. Though afterwards, Zabela tried to give Vrubel a child a gentle way, but when he saw the baby's face, Vrubel was frightened and said that it was the payment for the sins he committed. He fell into a state of depression and from that day on, Vrubel was no longer interested in anything but the obsession of the demon silhouette.

The painting "Devil sitting in the garden" painted in 1890

During this crisis period, Vrubel created a 'sitting devil' painting. Describe a demon sitting with a very melancholic face and a lonely and sensitive look with long hair. The eyes of demons like yearning for a love in a cold and alienated world. This strange demon face gradually appeared in many of Vrubel's works.

In 1901, his mental health became extremely bad, the doctors were mentally inferior to the decoding of his gruesome dreams. They only advised the artists to rest and treat for a long time.

The "Sad Devil" painting was completed in 1902

However, Vrubel ignored all, he continued to work and in 1902 he completed the most famous painting "The Devil of Dread". The painting depicts a demon who is contemplating, though it has a scary appearance but is also very pitiful.

Mikhail Vrubel was probably completely obsessed with his ghost dreams. Although the picture he painted was highly appreciated, he constantly changed the morphology and facial expressions of the demon in the painting, sometimes up to 40 times a day. That made the people who saw his paintings frightened to see that the demon in the picture was changing and Vrubel showed great interest.

The painting "Flying Devil"

Things got worse when his son died in 1903. The death of his young son was a big shock for Vrubel. He collapsed completely and spent most of his time in psychiatric clinics.

He gradually lost his eyesight and his mind was always unstable. Many nights, nightmares made Vrubel teach and scream, panic, he walked along the corridors in the night and muttered confusing words like talking to someone.

The last picture of Vrubel before he died

Finally, in 1910, Vrubel left forever. Some people claim that Vrubel is so talented that the devil envies, wants him to serve, so he created those scary dreams. But anyway, Vrubel has left mankind many priceless paintings.