[Buddha-l] Svetoslav Roerich--Buddhist painter

[jkirk]

A friend just sent me a link to a big collection of his paintings
online: 
http://www.roerich.ee/galnew/gallery.php?l=eng&g=
The picture Gundla, 1934 is exquisite, as so many others are too.

How about Gur -- The Seer, 1936? 
 
Of Russian descent,  he spent much of his life in S. Asia. Just
recently, I learned from an Indian friend that he was married to
a famous Indian actress, Devika Rani. You can see portraits of
her by clicking on -d-. 
 
His mother, Helena, was a theosophist and spiritualist, she
translated Mme Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine into Russian. Her
husband, Nicholas, was a famous painter, Orientalist and
traveler--before the revolution they went to India and lived in
Manali, Panjab. The link on Nicholas R. per se is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Roerich  
This wikipedia article about his father, N. R., seems to have
been badly translated from what?--Russian? 
 
Svetoslav Roerich's styles remind me distantly of Georgia
O'Keefe. (Perhaps she was influenced by his father N. Roerich's
paintings, on tour around the US, in 1920. Or was that too early
for her in the Southwest?) I've always loved S.R.'s work,
although a few are sort of over the top literal.   He was
eclectic in his references and influences--art nouveau, art deco,
influenced by Christianity, Islam, Hinduism--was he a theosophist
rather than a Buddhist? He could paint rocks and mountains like
nobody else. 
The painting by his father shown here 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:%22Song_of_Shambhala%22.jpg 
indicates that he was also influenced by one of his father's many
styles. 
 
Joanna