Meet Bulgarian Modern Artists

A precise, classically built composition and a purity and laconicism of form are characteristic of the harvest scenes of the artist. He represented a landscape panorama brought to a uniform tonality.

The talented sculptor Boris Chatz sought to achieve a tangibility of the image, accuracy of detail and depiction of the characteristic features of Bulgarians from different regions in his ‘genre’ portraits.

In 1914, Věšín completed his masterpiece, which, with the power of its emotional intensity and with his masterful colouring, became the brightest example of the genre in Modern Bulgarian art. Veshin’s freedom of painting, his rich palette and energetic brush, paved the way of modern painting for the next generation of Bulgarian artists.

In the 1890s, the first Bulgarians who had studied sculpture in Munich, Marin Vasilev and Zheko Spiridonov, actively joined in the artistic life of the country. Along with realistic portraits of political and cultural figures, they created works that expanded the thematic and genre range of Bulgarian sculpture.These first examples of sculpture, were organically related to the academic realism widespread in Europe during the second half of the nineteenth century. In Bulgaria, it is through descriptive realism of the form that art became related to the European art practice of the nineteenth century.

The plastic beauty and richness of the marble stand out particularly vividly in ‘Spirit and Matter’ (circa 1924), a work that has become a model in Bulgarian art of easel sculpture of the European spirit and form.

The movement for native art that emerged in the 1920s was a natural expression of this concept. The society of the same name, founded in 1919, united artists who shared the idea of ‘creating an art national in spirit’.

The images from those years often symbolically loaded, were developed in an idyllically romantic atmosphere by means of decorative stylisation.

This stylistics corresponded to the fashionable trends in European art of the early twentieth century.

Dimitrov–Maystora's compositions on the theme of ‘Wedding’ (1935) move beyond the concept of the genre scene and, through their ritual expression, become a symbol of universal values.

Vera Nedkova was one of the most active female artists during the 1930’s. She joined the Association of New Artists and participated in the exhibitions it organized. Her works formed part of the trend towards a new interest in Objective Reality

Ivan Nenov’s 1930’s work is characterized by a new interest in Objectivity, shared by other artists in Bulgaria. Some compositions bear testimony to a pronounced, belated interest in Cezanne and Cubism as ‘The Glass Jug’, 1933 and ‘Beggar’, 1933.

One of the main modern trends in Bulgarian art of the 1930s was post-Cézannisme. The constructively built forms and pure architectonics characterize the compositions, enhanced through the contrast of light areas and dark tones. The paintings of Kiril Tsonev are among the most prominent examples of this tendency. In the early 1930s, he travelled to Mexico and Cuba and became acquainted with the monumental works of Mexican artists José Orozco, David Siqueiros, and Diego Rivera. It was then that he painted ‘Alley in a Tropical Park’ (1932), one of his most famous landscapes.

Some artists since 1920s spent their path of life and work beyond the boundaries of Bulgaria. Absorbing and interpreting different modern trends in art they created individual stylistic lines, based on their sensitivity and perception of colour and form, thus enriching the European art scene.

Jules Pascin was a Bulgarian-born French Expressionist painter. Known under the pseudonym of the “Prince of Montparnasse”, he painted fragile petites filles, erotic scenes, or models in casual poses. He regularly exhibited prints and drawings in various important Parisian salons, including the Salon des Indépendants and satellite exhibitions of the Berlin Secession.

The artistic nature of the two brothers Nikolay and Ivan Abrashevi brought them at the beginning of the 1920s in Europe, then in Brazil and finally in the United States. Nikolay Abrashev’s work was influenced by post-war tendencies in art, transforming individual elements of Fauvism, Cubism, Expressionism and Futurism. While in Brazil, he actively participated in the formation of Brazilian modernist movement under the pseudonym Nicola de Garo. In the United States the Abrashev brothers settled in New York. In 1927 Nikolay and his brother established the Abrashev School of Art, which existed until their demise.