The New Tretyakov Gallery hosted a retrospective of Mikhail Vrubel, one of the most enigmatic authors in the history of Russian painting. He, according to his colleagues, did not have teachers in the classical sense, and after him, there were no students left - it's simply impossible to teach and learn this.

For the exhibition, which presented for the first time more than three hundred works by Vrubel, a brief history of his main masterpiece, The Demon, was compiled: how the painting at different times became a symbol of the Russian intelligentsia, the sexual revolution, and the insane nature of genius. Vrubel argued that the "Demon" is confused with the devil, while "Demon" means "soul" and personifies the eternal struggle of the restless human spirit, seeking reconciliation of the passions that overwhelm him, knowledge of life, and not finding an answer neither on earth nor in heaven.