Tragedy of the life of a talented artist "possessed by demons"

Painter Mikhail Vrubel is always immersed in nightmares, so his works always have the appearance of the devil and the strange dreamy look.

To many, Mikhail Vrubel is one of Russia's most famous painters. During his life, he not only created many valuable works of art, but also left humanity with the mystery of the devil in haunting paintings.

Vrubel was born in Russia into a family of lawyers. His father is of Polish descent while his mother is Danish, but unfortunately Vrubel lost his mother when he was 3 years old.

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

After that, Vrubel was introduced to be an associate of Professor Adrian Prakhov in Kiev. Here, he learned a lot of interesting painting knowledge, but he was also unlucky to be in love with Professor Prakhov's wife - the beautiful Emilia Lvovna.

Not only has a lovely appearance, Emilia is also a scholar of art and society, so Vrubel loves Emilia very much. Unfortunately, she is already Prakhov's wife, which makes Vrubel very miserable, even though he always keeps his distance, he still silently observes Emilia and paints her many beautiful pictures.

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

Knowing that this one-sided love could not be continued, Vrubel left to look for new creative inspirations. During this time, he continuously produced drawings of the Virgin Mary, but strangely, the face in the picture was identical to Emilia - whom Vrubel secretly loved.

Some time later, Vrubel returned to Kiev again to participate in the decoration of the works of Vladimir's Great Synagogue. Accidentally he met Professor Prakhov - the owner of the Grand Mosque.

Prakhov did not hide his grudge against his former student, and the relationship between the two was quite strained. Works are allocated to everyone but there is no Vrubel in that list. Depressed, Vrubel left the city and from there, the darkest things began to happen to him.

The failures in career and one-sided love made Vrubel's spirit go down seriously. Ever since then, the venerable painter is constantly haunted by terrible nightmares. In his dreams, he always saw ghosts in hell. They often visited in his restless sleep, startling him, waking him up in the middle of the night.

Vrubel has shown what he has witnessed in his dreams on his paintings and these works are not only impressed by the strange themes and materials but also by the harmonious composition, unique and dreamy colors.

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

Over time, Mikhail Vrubel was always immersed in a bad emotional state. He is easily irritable and over-excited, and at times, Vrubel gets angry for no reason at the people around him.

Many rumors appeared that Vrubel was possessed by a demon, which made the artist increasingly sad. It was not until Vrubel met and fell in love with the singer Nadezhda Zabela in 1895 that everything returned to normal.

After the wedding ceremony, Vrubel became happy again, he followed his lover on tours and took on the responsibility of decorating the background, drawing costumes for the characters that Nadezhda played.

Passionate love quickly helps Vrubel heal the demonic nightmare disease. He found a new creative direction based on his love for his wife and produced highly appreciated works such as: Princess Greda, Swan Queen...

But in 1898, horrible dreams came to Vrubel again. In his sleep, Vrubel saw strange images of what year - Satan, the dark crisis, hell, the ghost of the dead...

He became anxious again, depressed for many nights in a row. Vrubel almost stayed up all night, his temperament also changed to dizzy, from soft, gentle, generous, now, Vrubel has become rigid, like to quarrel. When someone criticized his ghostly paintings, Vrubel got angry and cursed the person severely.

Nedezhda Zabela was terrified by her husband's temper and fully believed that Vrubel had lost her mind. Although after that, Zabela tried to be gentle and bore Vrubel a child, but when he saw the child's face, Vrubel was scared and said that it was the payment for the sins he had committed. He fell into a state of depression and from that day on, Vrubel cared about nothing but the obsession of the demonic figure.

During this period of crisis, Vrubel produced the painting "sitting devil". Describes a sitting demon with a very melancholy face and a lonely, sensitive appearance with long hair. The devil's eyes yearn for love in a cold and alienated world. This strange demonic face gradually appeared in many of Vrubel's works.

In 1901, his mental health became so dire, psychiatrists "failed" to decipher his grisly dreams. They only know to advise the artist to take a long rest and treatment.

However, Vrubel ignored all, he continued to work and in 1902 he completed his most famous painting "The Sad Demon". The painting depicts a meditative demon, although it has a scary appearance, it is also very pitiful.

Mikhail Vrubel was probably completely haunted by his ghostly dreams. Although his paintings are highly appreciated, he constantly changes the form and facial expressions of the demon in the picture, sometimes up to 40 times a day. That action scared the viewers of his paintings when they noticed that the demon in the painting was changing and Vrubel was extremely interested.

Things took a turn for the worse when his son died in 1903. The young son's death was a huge shock to Vrubel. He broke down completely and spent most of his time in psychiatric clinics.

He gradually lost his eyesight and his mind was always unstable. Many nights, nightmares caused Vrubel to start screaming, panicking, he walked down the corridors in the dark, muttering incomprehensible words like he was talking to someone.

Finally, in 1910, Vrubel passed away for good. Some people think that Vrubel is so talented that the devil is jealous, wants him to serve, so he created those scary dreams. But no matter what, Vrubel has also left humanity with many priceless paintings.