Flying Demon

Like all other works by Mikhail Vrubel, Flying Demon is a profoundly sincere and confessional painting. The young Nietzschean hero cannot do evil, yet is unable to escape the chains of loneliness, the “inner dungeon” of his own making. Proud, melancholy and disdainful, he soars in the lifeless heights. Flying Demon was an extremely topical work. Combining the fin-de-siecle atmosphere with a strong element of autobiography, it expressed the moods of many Russians of that time.