The great Russian artist Mikhail Alexandrovich Vrubel was called “strange” by his contemporaries. Everything was unusual about this genius: his fantasies, his daring plastic language, his lonely position among his colleagues, the quirks of his behavior, the originality of his intellectual tastes. No one has ever been hounded so persistently by critics or elevated so highly by belated recognition. There have never been so many myths about anyone. Although the heights of happiness and the tragic abysses of Mikhail Vrubel’s real life are perhaps even more interesting than the legends that have developed about him. The author, writer and translator Vera Mikhailovna Domiteyeva, subtly and imaginatively builds the biography of the creator, who strives to “awaken the soul” with embodiments of beauty and mystery. sign of information products 16+