Mikhail Vrubel's 'Demon Seated in a Garden'

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Vrubel's paintings are dark, possessed, hallucinations - this was from 1890 and it is his most famous painting. We live in a fallen world, a world for pessimists.

Art fans are drawn to the innovative use of color and the iridescent sheen, as a precursor of the Expressionists. This painting made Vrubel famous and it's difficult not to see something autobiographical here in his fascination with demons and possession. A decade later, in a life marked by tragedy, he began his slide into a nervous breakdown and near blindness.

A ballet for pessimists...