Людмила Васильевна Шапошникова - Scholar, thinker, artist

The book briefly and deeply describes the oeuvre of Nicholas Roerich, who is extre mely significant to the Russian and world culture but whose significance has not been yet understood in its entirety. Nicholas Roerich was a unique person: he was a great painter, original thinker, tireless traveler and researcher, a public figure of planetary scale. He had, as it is shown in the book, that specific inner synthesis, so that any domain found within his range of interests, – be it art, science, poetry, philosophy or essay writing, – was not only related to the other but was also both interpenetrating and inseparable from it. He was an outstanding historian, archeologist ant ethnographer. His position, as a historian, was based on the philosophy of a cosmic reality, a new cosmic world outlook; according to the author of the book, a great number of his artworks have prophetic nature. Among Roerichs’ historic deeds are the unique Central-Asian Expedition with its valuable results, establishment of Urusvati Institute – the prototype of a synthetic science of future, the Pact named after Roerich on the protection of cultural heritage, which had and still have a significant contribution to the evolution of humanity. A great number of color reproductions of paintings by Nicholas Roerich related to the text give to the reader an opportunity to feel the esthetic side of the problems in question.