Painter, graphic artist, stage designer, sculptor and master of applied arts. Creator of the mythological paintings, portraits, landscapes and still lifes. In 1874 entered the law faculty of St. Petersburg University, simultaneously studying painting. From 1880-1884 studied at the Academy of Arts; the school of P.P.Chistyakov played an important role in his evolution as an artist. Later Vrubel developed the principle of revealing the internal structure of the form by producing its "edges", which was discovered by Chistyakov, in his creative work. Vrubel had an extensive philosophical, literary and aesthetic range. In 1885 he was invited to work in the Vladimir Cathedral and the Kirill Church in Kiev. His most famous works were created in the course of the 1890s. In 1902 he was diagnosed with a serious mental disorder. Later he was doomed to spend his life in clinics, but he continued his creative work in the periods when the disease weakened its hold on him. The artist went blind in 1906. M.A.Vrubel expressed the spiritual strivings of his epoch earlier than other artists, and his road to innovation was much more decisive than that of his contemporaries. The Abramtsevo society had great aesthetic influence on the artist. In the second half of the 1880s when he worked on studies for the frescoes of the Vladimir Cathedral in Kiev (which were not completed), he studied Byzantine mosaics and frescoes, mastering the exalted way of medieval art. In 1890 the artist creates his most remarkable work entitled "Seated Demon" which opened the main theme of his creative work. He was one of the first to address Symbolism and the style of Art Nouveau within the mainstream of European aesthetic exploration. In the 1890s Vrubel begins to cover the whole range of fine art. He creates decorative and monumental compositions, harmoniously painted into architecture ("Princess of Dreams", 1896; several panels on the theme of J.W. Goethe’s "Faust" (1906) for the Gothic study of the A.V. Morozov palace, studies majolica, stage design, book illustration, sculpture and decorative applied arts. In a number of works he tries to "pick up the intimate national note" (Pan, 1899; "The Swan Princess", 1900). After completing "Demon Vanquished" in 1902, Vrubel spends the rest of his life coping with his illness. Clinic-bound he produces such remarkable works as "Asrail, the Angel of Death. The Six-Winged Seraphim" (1904), and "The Rose" (1904) in his better moments. During the last years of Vrubel’s life, his creative work won European recognition, but most of his plans remained unfulfilled mainly due to the lack of understanding on the part of his contemporaries. The artists and poets of Symbolism in the 1900s saw the creative work of Vrubel as the school of the highest mastery and the living example of service to a vocation.