Cosmic albums of Jazep Drozdovich

Abstract

The article presents a significant part of creative heritage of the Belarusian painter Jazep Drozdovich (1888–1954), a graduate of the Vilnius Drawing School, who was depicting his cosmic visions and declaring the existence of life forms on other planets, yet in other conditions. The painter was convinced that he had a special gift of clairvoyance. Although space explorations commenced only in the 6th decade of the 20th century, Drozdovich pursued his “astral wanderings” through somnambulistic dreams. He travelled to the remote stars and planets: Moon, Mars, Saturn and Venus, and saw unimaginably beautiful landscapes, explored remarkable plants and animals, visited unknown countries and cities, and observed local citizens’ lives. He accurately and meticulously documented, recorded and painted everything what he saw. A specific feature of an unprecedented nature of this part of Drozdovich’s creativity is that he highlighted not only artistic but first of all scientific value of his cosmic wanderings. Historically, part of the painter’s heritage remained in Vilnius, the other part was brought to Minsk. All his texts revealing documentation of “cosmic wanderings” are kept in the Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences. Among them there are numerous notebooks and two bound manuscript books “Life in Mars” and “Life in Saturn”. These really valuable texts help to more specifically attribute Drozdovich’s paintings and graphics works, and to decode the scripts of some of his paintings. The analysis of Drozdovich’s creativity reveals the patterns of development of a unique painter’s personality. The available information and scientific knowledge let his fantasy escape from reality. The fantasy which allowed him explain the unknown as a reality similar to life on Earth. Jazep Drozdovich was able to create an endless cosmos in his inner world.