Calligraphy as Brain Train

The National Library of Russia in Saint Petersburg saw the opening of the Word Incarnate. Calligraphy: Text and Image exhibition that gathered thirty exhibitors from Russia, Norway, France, Ukraine, USA, Bulgaria. The youngest artist, Pyotr Semyonov, is seven years old, whereas the oldest one, Arpad Šalamún from Slovenia, is eighty-three. Young calligraphers from Moscow have submitted many works and personally arrived in time for the opening ceremony accompanied by their parents.

Sveta Tropinina from School #185, Moscow is only eight years old. Last year she went in for the art of beautiful handwriting with unchildlike seriousness. The girl refers to this gigantic «leap of pen» as «miracle» and «magic». She has set her mind to persevere in fancy lettering. Sveta has abandoned PC and gadgets for the sake of good old books (her favourite authors being Grigory Oster and Aleksandr Volkov) busting the myth of modern kids glued to glowing displays.

Despite near-to-zero funding, the exhibition proved to be very impressive as far as the range of exhibits and exhibitors and the artistic décor are concerned. Anton Likhomanov, Director General of the National Library of Russia was quoted saying, «This is our fourth calligraphy exhibition. Those magical lines of curved letters permeated with individual and unique style and technique produces a truly mesmerizing impact, hypnotizes into contemplation. Another strong point of the event is heavy participation not only from calligraphy maîtres, but also from children making their first but fairly successful steps in calligraphy.»

Pyotr Chobitko, Chairman of the Presidium of the National Union of Calligraphers, teacher at From Az to Izhitsa School believes calligraphy is an effective cure from intellectual degradation, a good brain training practice, «Unfortunately, today many children don’t use their hands for writing purposes preferring to press the keys, nice and easy. Thus, a number of significant neural centres remain idle. However, once they take up calligraphic exercises, the kids never give it up. However complex the technique might be, the pull of calligraphy is simply irresistible.»

The exhibition will be available at the National Library of Russia till September. The fixed event period will feature lectures, master-classes on calligraphy for adults and children.

The National Library of Russia in Saint Petersburg saw the opening of the Word Incarnate. Calligraphy:
Text and Image exhibition