The Russian poet of the Silver Age Marina Tsvetaeva since childhood spent summer days in Tarusa together with her family. Here she not only enjoyed the picturesque nature of the region, but also drew inspiration for her poems. Some of them, written here, were included in the collections ‘The Evening Album’ (1910) and ‘Magic Lantern’ (1912) and created the cycle ‘The Oka’. In the story ‘Khlystovka’, written by her in exile, she says: ‘I would like to lie in the Tarusa Khlystovsky cemetery, under an elder bush, in one of those graves with a silver dove, where the reddest and largest strawberries in our area grow. But if this is unrealizable, if not only I don’t lie there, but there’s no cemetery either, I would like that on one of the hills …. “.

In 1988, on the banks of the Oka, the Tsvetaevsky stone was installed with the inscription: “Marina Tsvetaeva would like to lie here, ” according to the will of the poetess. In 2006, in the city park of Tarusa, on the eve of Tsvetaeva”s birthday, her monument was erected. It was created by the artist Boris Messerer and the sculptor Vladimir Soskiev. It is also depicted by a painting by Evgeny Pukhov from the collection of the Tarusa Art Gallery.

The rainy autumn landscape is rendered in an impressionistic manner. The prevailing colors are yellow, green, red for the image of foliage and bouquets of flowers at the monument – they are also bright accents in the picture. Despite the grayness of the autumn sky and the river, the artist manages to create a sense of harmony, contemplative silence, which is also emphasized by the lonely human figure in the background of the graceful silhouette of the monument.

Artist Evgeny Pukhov (b. 1962) is a member of the Union of Artists of Russia and the international art group “The Moscow Palette”. Graduated from the Moscow Academic Art College (Homage to 1905), he taught at the art school in Kaluga. He participated in numerous exhibitions in Russia and abroad, including in an open-air exhibition in Tarusa in 2008.