“Helena Roerich. Facets of Creativity”
An inauguration of the Hall devoted to Helena Roerich at the administrative building of the Urusvati Institute took place on 30th April 2019 and was dedicated to the 140th anniversary of the outstanding Russian woman – a wife and associate of Nicholas Roerich, a philosopher and writer whose creative heritage and most extensive spiritual experience made a truly invaluable contribution to the Treasury of world culture.
Together with her husband and their two sons Yuri (George) and Svetoslav, Helena Roerich lived at the Himalayan Estate in Naggar for around 20 years and all these years were filled with tireless creative work. Active contributing to the activities of the Urusvati Himalayan Research Institute, promoting ideas of the Roerich Pact and the Banner of Peace, working on texts of the Living Ethics philosophic teaching, writing thousands of letters explaining the ideas of the Living Ethics… She was creating for the good of people, for their future and the humanity still has many years ahead to reflect on the heroic effort made by this remarkable woman.
Sure vivid strokes and the vibrant characters suggest that Helena Roerich was in conscious contact with the worlds of higher states of matter, that she pictured the images perceived by her inner sight. In particular, the drawings titled “One Temple for All” and “The Light” reflect the idea of a single source of all religions. “All philosophies, all religions went out of a Single Source, and the same Great Intellects that brought the Light <…> at dawn of our humanity, continued bringing it throughout the whole course of the slow process of the human consciousness evolution”, wrote Helena Roerich. “It is awareness of Them that saturated the mentality of mankind with the Single Truth, brought by Them in attires of various philosophies and religions corresponding to their time.”
Many of Helena Roerich drawings became the basis of the paintings of Nicholas Roerich. The artist often repeated that under each of his paintings there should be two names - male and female.
Archival photos presented at the exhibition, as well as books and personal items from the funds of the IRMT, Naggar, which still keep the warmth of hands of this amazing woman, tell about Helena’s earthly path, her life and creative activity.
The valuable exhibit of the Hall is a small sculpture of Helena Roerich sitting in an armchair with a book in her hands, made and presented to the IRMT by Lyudmila Kalugina, a professor at the Saint Petersburg Stieglitz State Academy of Art and Design.
Helena Roerich image harmoniously combined the terrestrial and the heavenly features. She was the most educated woman of her time, a writer and public figure, remaining a loving wife and a caring mother - and at the same time she was an eminent philosopher and collaborator of the Higher Powers.
“The time will come, – she wrote in one of her letters, – and the science of distant worlds, so little palpable now, will be exciting and close to our consciousness, will become tangible. We’ll understand all our dependence on these distant and close worlds. The unity of Cosmos and the humanity will become the indisputable truth, and such a consciousness will change life of a thinking person.”
The exhibition was organized by the team of the International Roerich Memorial Trust in cooperation with the International Centre of the Roerichs (Moscow), with reproductions of Helena Roerich’s drawings from the collection of the International Centre of the Roerichs as its core. Archangel Michael, Akbar, Arhat, Allal Ming, Shri Shankaracharya and many others.
