Deluge (IV) 1904

Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis made 'Deluge (IV)' with pastel, and what strikes me most is the way the marks seem to build from the bottom up. The texture is so tangible, isn't it? You can almost feel the graininess of the pastel on your fingertips. He coaxes colour out of colour, so the whole picture shimmers. Notice those vertical marks on the arch, how they seem to strain upwards, giving a sense of both structure and instability. I love the ambiguity, the way the solid structures can also seem to be dissolving. Ciurlionis, who was also a composer, creates paintings that evoke musical harmonies. Like a sustained chord, there's something both comforting and unsettling about it, don't you think? This interest in the relationship between music and painting places him alongside artists like Kandinsky, who was also exploring synesthesia around the same time. It's like an ongoing conversation between art forms, a search for ways to express the inexpressible.