First museum of calligraphic art in Moscow

Letters that look like a wave, or flowers, or a cloud of a wonderful form   … Sometimes it’s important not what to write but how to do it  — founders of the first calligraphic museum in Moscow are convinced.

The best pieces of fancy and accurate writing art are collected under one roof from every place of the world to begin with Chinese characters and Arabic ligature to Slavic syllable and letter writing. Chief masters of calligraphy arrived at the museum opening ceremony in Moscow to give master-classes to first visitors. “Calligraphy is a spiritual condition. Relax, clean your mind , only afterwards go on writing. Don`t hurry”, — Chinese calligrapher Chen Wen-Fu instructed the beginners. Besides, in East calligraphy is as important as art of defense is, it is considered to be one of the ways to strengthen one’s spirit and to self-improve. There exists ancient Chinese saying: The lazy won`t learn the macrocosm since he is lazy to write calligraphically”. So Chen Wen-Fu feels that contemporary people lose a lot by replacing feathers and brushes with computer key-note. Supporters of penmanship exist in Russia too. Petr Chobitko, painter, professor of St Petersburg Academy of Art   has been practicing calligraphy for 40 years already, not long ago he published the book where he described how art of fancy writings “helps to breathe and live”.

Daily 15-min calligraphy classes restore blood pressure, psychics. “For my point of view, nowadays it is a panacea for a human being– one can`t live without calligraphy, — says Petr Chobitko.

Of course, calligraphy possesses not only aesthetic ant therapist importance, what’s more it helps to preserve time   bond. Although we are not always able to understand what’s written in historical manuscripts, but only by character of line one can judge if the words are about love or hatred. So museum visitors long and attentively like at landscape paintings look at  fragments of correspondence of French philosopher with Russian Empress Ekaterina II or of note written by genius Mozart. Soon museum collection will be expanded by unique object – hand-written Constitution of Russian Federation created by team of seven painters.

Tatyana Karpekina.

Source: Radio channel “Voice of Russia”