The Master and Margarita
© Ivan Cangelosi, 2014
143X130 cm
Paint and Ink on paper
Technique – Handwriting on painted subject of the whole novel of Mikhail Bulgakov – Italian
Material – Pens, Acrylic and paper
Category – Satire/Allegory
About the novel – “The Master and Margarita” (Russian Мастер и Маргарита) is a novel by the Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov, published for the first time in 1967.
The plot focuses on the political persecution suffered by a writer (called Master) by the Soviet authorities in the thirties, about his love towards Margarita Nikolaevna. The novel also tells a parallel story regarding the process to the Messiah and Pontius Pilate.
The novel is about the good and the evil, innocence and guilt, rational and irrational, illusion and truth, examining issues such as the responsibility towards truth when authority would deny it, and the freedom of the spirit in an unfree world. Particularly fierce is also a satire against the literary elite of that time, immortalized in the members of the association called “Massolit”, a group of mediocre poets, false intellectual and hypocrites.
Description of the painting – The subjects depicted in this painting are evocative of some of the characters of the novel. One may recognize, for instance, the cat (Behemoth), Margarita (the naked woman flying on a broom) and Woland (man with beard and top hat).