"Painter, sculptor, designer and illustrator Nikolai Konstantinovich Kalmakov was born in 1873 in Nervi, Italy, and belonged to the second generation of Russian Symbolists. An important artist of the Russian Silver Age of Culture, he depicted predominantly the erotic, exotic and demonic; femme fatales and demonic monsters drawing from a wide lexicon of historical and mythological images, including Hercules, Adonis, Orpheus, Astarte and Salome. He was able to evoke the mystique and splendor of Antiquity and the Renaissance as a backdrop to his wantonly and diabolical figures."--Dadainifineart.com.