May Petrovich Miturich-Khlebnikov is known primarily as an illustrator of children’s books. He also worked as a decorator and muralist, painted portraits and landscapes. His soft, fluid manner of painting is recognizable in different genres.

This picture shows a young man with an attentive gaze, in a careless, relaxed pose: his right hand lies on the back of the sofa, one leg is bent; the lower part of his clothes almost dissolves, which gives the whole figure an airy, somewhat fantastic appearance.

This person is the artist Alexander Mikhailovich Ponomarev, a native of Astrakhan, “Khlebnikov’s city”. After finishing secondary school in Astrakhan, Alexander graduated from the Moscow Art Theater School in 1981 (the class of Vasily Petrovich Markov) and spent five years on the stage of the Konstantin Stanislavsky Drama Theater. Then he became an actor of the Moscow Hermitage Theater.

An admirer of avant-garde artists, Ponomarev founded the Odd and Even Theater Studio at the Creative Workshops in Moscow and worked there from 1988 to 1993. The repertoire included productions based on the works of Velimir Khlebnikov, Daniil Kharms, Alexander Vvedensky, and Aleksei Kruchenykh.

The audio recording of his production of Velimir Khlebnikov’s supernarrative “Zangezi” was awarded the Grand Prix in Wroclaw. In 1993, Alexander Ponomarev brought this performance to Astrakhan, and it was shown three times with great success on the stage of the Philharmonic Concert Hall. This event marked the beginning of the artist’s cooperation with the Khlebnikov House Museum.

Alexander Ponomarev donated to the museum video recordings of several productions based on the works of Velimir Khlebnikov, including “The Present”, “Zangezi”, “Little Tragedies”, “Mrs. Lenin”, “The Law of the Seesaw”, as well as “Victory over the Sun” by Aleksei Kruchenykh.

Alexander Ponomarev’s involvement in the Khlebnikov theme had an interesting turn in 2021: the actor was invited to become part of a French film dedicated to the life and work of Velimir. The film was shot in such memorable locations for the Khlebnikov family as the House Museum itself, the Astrakhan Biosphere Reserve, and the Kalmyk khurul (a Buddhist monastery) in the village of Rechnoye.