Rocks (Karelia) 1917

Nicholas Roerich made this oil on canvas painting of ‘Rocks (Karelia)’ sometime in the early 20th century. Roerich was a Russian artist, writer, archaeologist and public figure whose influential paintings promoted a unique blend of symbolism, mysticism, and Russian nationalism. Here, we see the stark beauty of the Karelian landscape of North-West Russia, a region bordering Finland, a geography that carries its own history of contestation between Russia and the Nordic countries. The landscape is reduced to its bare geological essence: rocks. In this reductive vision, we can see something of Roerich’s Russian nationalism, evoking a timeless, ancient vision of the Russian land. We might compare this to earlier 19th century romantic visions of landscape, like those of Caspar David Friedrich in Germany, that used landscape to express national identity and spiritual meaning. By researching the cultural context, and the history of Russian art and politics, we can better understand the role of an artist like Roerich.