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“Night” 1900 by Mikhail Vrubel (1856-1910)

Mikhail Vrubel was a versatile artist who excelled in painting, graphics, sculpture, as well as in monumental and applied arts. His name is routinely associated with Russian Symbolism and Art Nouveau and perhaps rightly so.

Mikhail Alexandrovich Vrubel was born in 1856 in the city of Omsk in Western Siberia to a family of a military lawyer. His mother died when he was not yet three years old and his father remarried four years later. Vrubel’s stepmother was a good pianist and helped develop Vrubel’s musical sensibilities. In his teen years, he became a fervent theater aficionado. Later in his life, he married a prominent opera singer and was on good terms with composer Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov. Many of his mature works were inspired by opera and music.