Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis was a Lithuanian painter and composer. He wrote about 300 musical works during his short life and produced roughly the same number of paintings. He was the eldest of nine children of Konstantinas Čiurlionis and Adelė Radmanaitė. In 1878 his family moved to Druskininkai, where his father became organist at the local church. A musical prodigy, he could reproduce music at the age of three and read it by seven.
After primary school, Čiurlionis attended Prince Michał Ogiński's music school in Plungė from 1889 to 1893, learning several instruments, particularly the flute. He studied piano and composition at the Warsaw Conservatory from 1894 to 1899. His graduation work was the cantata De profundis for mixed choir and symphony orchestra, written under the supervision of Zygmunt Noskowski. He then studied composition with Carl Reinecke at the Leipzig Conservatory in 1901–1902 and took drawing lessons at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts from 1904 to 1906. He also taught piano.
Čiurlionis settled in Vilnius in 1907. He helped initiate the First Exhibition of Lithuanian Art at the Vileišis Palace and was among its exhibitors; he was also one of the nineteen artists who founded the Lithuanian Union of Artists. He conducted Vilniaus Kanklės, described as Lithuania's first professional choir. In 1908, his music was presented at the Evenings of Contemporary Music in St. Petersburg alongside works by Nikolai Medtner and Alexander Scriabin. He married the art critic Sofija Kymantaitė in 1909; they had a daughter, Danutė, whom he never saw.
His principal compositions include the symphonic poems In the Forest and The Sea, a string quartet in C minor, a Piano Sonata in F major, the unfinished Symphony in D minor, the unfinished opera Jūratė, sacred choral works, approximately 200 short piano pieces, sixteen cycles of piano preludes, organ fugues and preludes, and around sixty Lithuanian folk songs for unaccompanied choir. Much of his music was published only after his death. His collected piano works were issued by his sister Jadvyga Čiurlionitė in 1957, while his string quartet and symphonic poems were published in the mid-1960s. He subsequently became the most frequently performed Lithuanian composer.
As a painter, Čiurlionis was associated with Symbolism, though his work is difficult to assign to a single school. He was a synesthete who heard colours in music, and many of his paintings use musical titles such as sonata, fugue and prelude. His major painted cycles include The Flood, Winter, The Creation of the World, The Zodiac, Spring Sonata, Sun Sonata, Summer Sonata, Sea Sonata, Star Sonata, and Fairy Tales.
After exhibiting paintings in St. Petersburg in November 1909, Čiurlionis fell into a severe depression. He entered a sanatorium in Pustelnik, near Marki, early in 1910 and died there of pneumonia in 1911, aged 35. He was buried in Rasos Cemetery in Vilnius. Posthumous exhibitions of his paintings began in Vilnius, Kaunas and Moscow in 1911, followed by St. Petersburg in 1912. The M. K. Čiurlionis Museum opened in Kaunas in 1921 and holds the largest share of his paintings; a memorial museum opened in his childhood home in Druskininkai in 1963. The International M. K. Čiurlionis Competition for pianists and organists has been held in Vilnius every four years since 1968.