Рерих, Николай Константинович

Painter, stage designer, graphic artist, poet, mystic

Born St. Petersburg, 9 October 1874

Died Kulu (India), 13 December 1947

At the age of nineteen Nicholas Roerich was send by his father, a prominent lawyer, to study Law at the Imperial University of St. Petersburg, Roerich, however, never abandoned his boyhood interest in painting and archaeology, and graduated four years later both from the Imperial Law School and the Imperial Academy of Art. In the early years of the 20th century he painted landscapes, designed for theatre productions, was active in peace movements drawing posters and ant-war illustrations. In1913 Roerich designed the backdrops and costumes for the most famous of Diaghilev’s productions: Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps. In October 1922 Roerich settled in New York and profiled himself as an artist, scientist and philosopher. He started his own museum and organized the Roerich-American Central Asiatic Expedition which was to absorb him for the rest of his life. He returned twice to the United States: in 1924, for the opening of the Roerich Museum in New York and in 1929, for the opening of the specially built twenty-four story edifice, which housed a study centre for philosophy, painting, music, literature and dance on Riverside Drive, New York. In the end Roerich settled in Kulu, in the Himalayas.

1906

1915 - 16

1918

1920 - 21

1922 - 24

1926-27

1929 - 29

1930

1931

1932

1938

1939

1968

1970

1974

1976

1984

1986

1989

1994

1996 - 98

2001 - 02

2009