Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis was born in Senoji Varėna, a town in southeastern Lithuania which at the time was part of the Russian Empire.

His mother Adelė née Radmanaitė (Radmann) (1854-1919) was descended from a Lutheran family of Bavarian origin, born in Vileikiai village (Lazdijai region).

His father Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1851-1914, born in Guobiniai) was an organist and a choirmaster who briefly played the organ in Liškiava, which is where the couple met.

The newly formed family moved to Senoji Varėna, where their eldest child, Mikalojus, was born.

There were nine siblings altogether: Mikalojus Konstantinas (1875-1911), Marija (1879-1969), Juzė (1882-1969), Povilas (1884-1945), Stasys (1887-1944), Petras (1890-1924), Jonas (1891-1955), Valerija (1896-1955), and Jadvyga (1898-1992).

Even though Čiurlionis' family spoke Polish, Mikalojus Konstantinas could understand and read Lithuanian, albeit he was not proficient and would receive assistance from his fiancée from 1907 onwards.

[5] A family friend, doctor Jozef Markiewicz noticed his natural talent and upon Mikalojus' graduation from the folk school of Druskininkai, wrote a letter to the Lithuanian noble Michał Mikołaj Ogiński recommending to enroll M. K. Čiurlionis to the Palace Orchestra School in Plungė.

Supported by Prince Ogiński' scholarship Čiurlionis studied piano and composition at Warsaw Institute of Music from 1894 to 1899.

Father, after noticing the love of his young daughter and at the time unknown artist, intervened and married Maria of to a widower.

M. K. Čiurlionis buried himself in work: wrote preludes, fugues, canons, variation cycles for the piano.

For his graduation, in 1899, he wrote a cantata for mixed chorus and symphonic orchestra titled De Profundis, and received the diploma for the composition specialty.

He declined the offer to become the orchestra master for Lublin's Music Society Choir and continued creating - in 1900 he finished his first symphonic poem "In the Forest", which was dedicated to E. Morawski.

After receiving the approval and further scholarship from M. Ogiński, in 1901 M. K. Čiurlionis joined the Leipzig Conservatory, where he was taught composition by Carl Reinecke, contrapunto by Salomon Jadassohn.

As he was in Leipzig, he listened to and studied the works of G. F. Haendel, P. Tchaikovsky, R. Wagner, F. Liszt, H. Berlioz, R. Strauss, created the symphonic overture "Kęstutis".

In 1903, he painted the 7-painting cycle "Funeral Symphony", but also did not forget music: he started creating his second symphonic poem "The Sea".

[8] His main teacher in Warsaw was symbolist painter Kazimierz Stabrowski, who was also the founder of the first lodges of the Theosophical Society in Poland and passed to Čiurlionis an interest in Theosophy and other esoteric subjects.

[10] In the School he was taught drawing by Karol Tichy, Konrad Krzyżanowski, sculpture by Xawery Dunikowski, painting by Ferdynand Ruszczyc, went to the organized plein-airs.

In 1904 he showed 19 of his works (stained glass projects, cycle of 6 paintings "The Storm", book covers) in the private exhibition of the School.

B. Wolman gave M. K. Čiurlionis money for his trip through Europe: he went to Prague, Dresden, Nuremberg, Munich, Vienna; the artist adored the works of Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Böcklin.

In 1907 M. K. Čiurlionis moved to Vilnius,[13] where he lived on 11 Savičiaus Street,[14] and actively involved himself in culture: he was elected to the board of Lithuanian Art Society, was the choirmaster of the choir "Vilniaus kanklės".

Constant work without breaks, material deprivations tired out M. K. Čiurlionis - Sofija found him acting strange on Christmas Eve and brought him to a neuropathologist and psychiatrist V. Bechterev, who diagnosed him with burnout.

In 1910 both came back to Druskininkai, later M. K. Čiurlionis was hospitalized in a health resort "Czerwony Dwór" (Red Manor) in Marki, Poland, northeast of Warsaw.

The precise number of Čiurlionis musical compositions is not known – a substantial part of his manuscripts did not survive, including those that perished in the fire during the war.

The nature of the archive determined the fact that Čiurlionis' works were finally published only a hundred years after the composer's death.

M. K. Čiurlionis' harmonized folk songs like "Dawning dawn" ("Beauštanti aušrelė"), "Oh It Goes, It Goes" ("Oi lekia, lekia"), "Dad Will Dance" ("Šoks tėvelis suktinį"), and "Promised So Far" ("Taip toli žadėta") were played/sung in Lithuanian song festivals in Chicago (USA) and Toronto (Canada).

Even though it is known that he would paint his surroundings while studying in Plungė in 1893, he started his professional painter path only when he was 27 years old, after he joined Warsaw's Drawing School.

[17] In the first M. K. Čiurlionis paintings (from 1903) there is an abundance of fantasy creatures, mystic rulers of the past, traces of Lithuanian pagan culture, elements of cosmogony - Gods, planets, stars, the Sun.

After Čiurlionis's death in 1911, the Russian critic Valerian Adolfovich Chudovsky [ru] (transliterated as Tschoudowsky in English) wrote: Now that he is dead, the authors of the spiritual revival of Lithuania present Ciurlionis (sic) as a national artist.

His paintings were featured at "Visual Music" fest, an homage to synesthesia that included the works of Wassily Kandinsky, James McNeill Whistler, and Paul Klee, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles in 2005.

[24] A commemorative plaque has been placed on the building of the former hospital in Marki, Poland where Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis died in 1911.