Abode of King Gesar 1947

Nicholas Roerich created "Abode of King Gesar" with paint, showing us a world of towering mountains. There's a beautiful, almost graphic quality to the peaks and valleys, like looking at a landscape through stained glass. You can really feel the hand of the artist in the way he’s built up these forms, one color next to another. I keep coming back to the creamy, golden light he’s painted on the mountain face; it's as if the landscape emanates light. The paint application looks smooth, but there are also hard edges and clearly defined shapes. It makes me think of early modernist painting, but with this added layer of mysticism. It reminds me of Hilma af Klint and her spiritual approach to abstraction, both artists searching for something beyond the surface of what we see. Ultimately, art is about asking questions, not giving answers, and this painting invites us to dream about what might lie beyond the visible world.