Chud has gone under the ground 1913

Nicholas Roerich made this painting, Chud has gone under the ground, using tempera, and look at that blue! It’s like he mixed the sky with the sea and stirred in a bit of a dream. You can tell he wasn’t trying to make a picture that looked exactly like real life. Instead, Roerich used color and form to give you a feeling. See how the paint isn’t thick or gloppy? It’s smooth, like a veil. It makes the whole scene feel distant, like a memory. And the mountains in the back look like sleeping giants, or maybe faces in a cloud. I like how everything seems connected, the sky, the land, even the little figures down below. They’re all part of the same story. Roerich was into folklore and spirituality, so his paintings often have this sense of mystery and hidden meaning, almost like the work of Hilma af Klint. It’s like he’s saying there’s more to the world than we can see with our eyes.