Viewing M.K Čiurlionis: Between Worlds

Although the artist and composer M.K. Čiurlionis is little-known in the UK, he is one of Lithuania’s most celebrated artists. The first major UK exhibition dedicated to Čiurlionis aims to set the record straight. Spanning the breadth of his short but prolific career, it explores how he used structure and colour to create works that sit between mythology and reality, while also spotlighting the motifs that aligned his art to European symbolism.

Organised chronologically, it includes more than 100 works, from his most celebrated masterpieces to his storied cycles — groupings of works where scenes and narrative evolve over time. Notable highlights include Creation of the World (1905/1906), a series of 13 paintings in which Čiurlionis manifests his own visions of the creation story; and Winter (1907), a cycle of eight paintings, which illustrates his move towards abstraction.

Also noteworthy is Rex (1909), one of Čiurlionis’ late and best-known artworks, which combines elements of mythology, folklore and mysticism. After meandering around the galleries, head to the Dulwich Picture Gallery Mausoleum to see Čiurlionis’s musical compositions.

Shown together, they reveal the breadth of Čiurlionis’s artistic practice and ability to flit between worlds – from the celestial to the earthly, the physical to the spiritual, from music to painting, the fantastical to the real, and from the figurative to the abstract.