Date: 29.09.2020
Many years ago, while working as a drawing instructor in a school, Ruzanna Movsesyan organised The children’s theatre. Ruzanna read Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin to the children, and upon discovering the poet they not only painted, but also retold the novel in verses of their own composition.
It was that very novel in verse that many years later became the basis for the creation of this book. Ruzanna Movsesyan used her time in forced isolation to realise her old dream—she created a ‘book theatre’ by translating the images of the children’s poetry onto paper. For literally every line, the director-artist found an exact visual embodiment. This is how the book, Eugene Onegin, A Novel in Verse and Pictures. Composition Not by Alexander Pushkin, but by the 8-year-old girl Asya Fyodorova, came to be.
The exhibition at the Russian State Art Library presents Movsesyan’s original drawings with which she illustrated the children’s poems on the theme of Eugene Onegin.
