The Amaravella Art Movement

Since no one has posted in over a year, I think we should try and kick-start this thing. So, in lieu of trying to write something original, here is an art post. The Amaravella movement was sort of the artistic subset of the Russian Cosmist movement of the early 20th century. The name is apparently a Sanskrit word meaning "sprouts of immortality", and the group was active in the 1920s.

Amaravella had scientific and spiritual influences: one early influence was the Lithuanian painter Mikalogus Konstantinas Ciurlionis. Ciurlionis was an important precursor of abstract art in Europe, and also contributed to the Art Nouveau movement, which is pretty evident from his works:

You can see pretty clearly the architectural side of his work, and the mystical side, but also the naturalistic and scientific. The second painting is a stylized picture of lightning, and the last is part of a series of works called The Creation of the World.

A more esoteric early influence on Amaravella was Nicholas (or Nikolai) Roerich, a Russian painter, theosophist, and spiritualist. Roerich in particular brought some serious Eastern mystic influence to the movement.

This Eastern mysticism influenced Boris Smirnov-Rusetsky, a member of Amaravella proper:

Okay, I should stop, though I could put stuff up by this guy forever. You can pretty clearly see the Russian influence, all of his paintings have a pretty strong Russian rodinia feel, but you can also feel the spaciness and the influence of cosmism. In fact, the second painting above is part of his Cosmist cycle.

Another member of Amaravella was Victor Chernovolenko. This guy doesn't even have an English Wikipedia page (outrage!) so I can't tell you much about him, but I have some cool pictures.

Once again, you can see the futurism, and the spaciness, but also the spirituality. The last painting there is called "Pray", and other works of his have distinctly spiritual themes, while still being science-fictiony. 

Anyway, that's all I really have on Amaravella, but I think, going with my original inspiration for this whole mythos of the Cosmists, that it's worth it to see their main artistic offshoot. And personally speaking, I find the art really beautiful.