Portrait of Albert Einstein, lithograph by Boris Georgiev. Signed and dated by Einstein (in pencil, "A. Einstein 1929") and by the artist ("Boris Georgiev / Berlin V – 1929"). Berlin, May 1929.
The Bulgarian artist Boris Georgiev (1888-1962), born in Varna, studied art at the school headed by Nicholas Roerich in Saint Petersburg and was deeply affected by his style and spiritual world. Later he studied in Munich and after graduating, travelled European countries. During the late 1920s, when he was staying in Berlin, he met Albert Einstein for the first time. Einstein was impressed with Georgiev's works and helped him organize an exhibition at the Schulte gallery in Berlin. In gratitude, Georgiev made a portrait of Einstein and gave it to him as a gift. After receiving the portrait, Einstein wrote to Georgiev: "Your art made me feel in those spheres, where far from hardships and sufferings, the soul finds peace. After a long contemplation of the portrait you made, I felt the need to thank you with all my heart" (see: Roopa-Lekha, volume 52, published by All-India Fine Arts and Crafts Society, 1981. p. 60).
During the years 1931-1936, Georgiev lived in India, learned about its culture, met the leaders Mahatama Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore and Jawaharlal Nehru and even painted their portraits. These portraits, as well as the many other portraits Georgiev painted during his travels around the world, are unique in their soft colors and airiness which give them a dream-like quality; Georgiev drew his inspiration from Renaissance art and the spiritual doctrines he discovered throughout his life.
62X49.5 cm leaf. Mounted on a thin card mount. Good condition. Tears and minor blemishes to margins (not affecting the portrait). Traces of framing.

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The German-Jewish physicist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) is considered by many the greatest physicist of the 20th century. Einstein was attracted to science at a very young age, autonomously proving Pythagoras' theorem at the age of 12. In 1905, Einstein published four groundbreaking articles in the Annalen der Physik ("Annals of Physics") journal. The articles, dealing with the photoelectric effect, the Brownian motion, special relativity and the equivalence of mass and energy, are considered the fundamental building blocks of modern physics (due to their importance, the year is known as "Einstein's Extraordinary Year"). The short popular summary of one of the four articles is the well-known equation E=mc2 (Energy = mass x the speed of light squared), an equation that has become one of the most famous physics equations and the most identified with Einstein and physics in general. In 1915, after approximately ten years of work, Einstein published the General Relativity Theory – a geometric theory of gravitation which transformed the world of physics. General relativity was initially accepted in the scientific world with much skepticism; when it was finally confirmed, it was widely publicized even in the popular press and earned Einstein his world renown. Although many supported Einstein as a Nobel Prize laureate, the awarding of the prize was postponed time and again, due to the doubts of several conservative scientists and the objections of various antisemitic scientists. Eventually, in 1922 he was retroactively awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics, not for General Relativity but rather "for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect".

Einstein dedicated the final thirty years of his life to developing the Unified Field Theory, which was supposed to unify the fundamental forces of nature within a single theoretical framework. Although eventually, he did not succeed in transforming his ideas into a solid theory, his efforts motivated other scholars to search for "a unified theory". His work in this field is one of his most important contributions to the world of science.