Mikalojus Konstantinas

Čiurlionis was a Lithuanian painter and composer.

During his short life he composed about 250 pieces of music and created about 300 paintings.

The majority of his paintings are housed in the M. K. Čiurlionis National Art Museum in Kaunas, Lithuania.

His works have had a profound influence on modern Lithuanian culture.

M. K. Čiurlionis was born in 1875 in Varėna.

He was the oldest of nine children of his father,

Konstantinas, and his mother,Adelė.

Čiurlionis was a musical prodigy: he could play by ear at age three and could sight-read music freely by age seven.

Three years out of primary school, he went to study at the musical school of Prince Michał Oginski where he learned to play several orchestral instruments, in particular the flute, from 1889 to 1893.

Supported by Prince Oginski's 'scholarship' Čiurlionis studied piano and composition at the Warsaw Conservatory from 1894 to 1899.

For his graduation, in 1899, he wrote a cantata for mixed chorus and symphonic orchestra titled De Profundis, with the guidance of the composer Zygmunt Noskowski.

Later he attended composition lectures at the Leipzig Conservatory and studied drawing at the Warsaw School of Fine Arts from 1904 to 1906 and became a friend of Polish composer and painter Eugeniusz Morawski-Dąbrowa.

He was one of the initiators of, and a participant in, the First Exhibition of Lithuanian Art that took place in 1907 in Vilnius

Soon after this event the Lithuanian Union of Arts was founded, and Čiurlionis was one of its 19 founding members.

He died of pneumonia in 1911 at 35 years of age. He was buried at the Rasos Cemetery in Vilnius.

Čiurlionis felt that he was a synesthete; that is, he perceived colors and music simultaneously.

Many of his paintings bear the names of musical pieces: sonatas, fugues, and preludes.