MusicaModerna Scriabin - Links with Other Artists
- Kandinsky (1866 - 1944), Russian-German painter, deeply admired Scriabin’s work. Both were in search of a “Total Art,” aiming to merge all artistic forms into a unified expression of being. Kandinsky criticized Wagner for “limiting himself to only music and poetry,” and instead envisioned a more radical synthesis that included visual art. A synesthete like Scriabin, Kandinsky remained profoundly inspired by music throughout his life—many of his paintings bear titles such as “Composition” or “Improvisation.”
- Boris Pasternak (1890–1960), renowned Russian writer best known for Doctor Zhivago, encountered Scriabin in 1903 while he was composing his Symphony No.3. Pasternak described the music as “magical, ethereal.” Encouraged by Scriabin, he later composed his own Sonata in B Minor (1909). His father, the painter Leonid Pasternak, also created sketches of Scriabin, capturing his presence visually.
- Scriabin drew great inspiration from other art forms and immersed himself in Western philosophy, studying thinkers like Nietzsche and Kant, and engaging with painters such as Jean Delville. Synesthesia—a core experience for Scriabin—was a shared fascination across modernist circles, echoed in Baudelaire’s Correspondances, Rimbaud’s Voyelles, and Debussy’s Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air du soir.
