M. K. Čiurlionis: life, art and music on the margins
Lithuanian artist and musician M. K. Čiurlionis (1875-1911) is one of the most unusual figures in both art and music around the turn of the 19th century. He created around 300 works of art and about the same number of musical compositions. In art, he included elements of abstraction within a realist idiom; in music, he brought avant-garde techniques into an underlying romantic idiom.
Dr George Kennaway’s talk will set out Čiurlionis’s biography and his place in eastern European music and art.
Dr George Kennaway is a Scottish cellist, conductor and musicologist with visiting research fellowships at the Universities of Leeds and Huddersfield. He is a specialist in the art and music of M. K. Čiurlionis, having published articles on his reception in England and on analytical aspects of his music.
Image: M.K.Čiurlionis, Serenity, 1904-1905. Pastel, charcoal on paper, 54 x 74 cm. Courtesy M.K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art, Kaunas
