Himalayas 1934

Nicholas Roerich made this painting, Himalayas, with what looks like oil on canvas, using a gorgeous palette of lilac, ochre, and snowy white. You can almost feel him building those mountains up, one brushstroke at a time, pushing and pulling the paint to find their forms. I imagine Roerich, out there in the landscape, squinting at the light as he tries to capture the feeling of these monumental forms. Look how the paint is laid on in these flattened planes, creating a kind of geological abstraction. The peaks are all edges and facets, catching the light in unexpected ways. It reminds me of the way Cezanne rendered Mont Sainte-Victoire over and over again. There’s something so solid and dreamlike about the way Roerich has depicted the shadows in deep purples, making the mountains feel both present and otherworldly. I feel like I'm standing in the face of something ancient and immense. And it makes you wonder about how artists, through their own visions, keep having this conversation across time and space.