The exhibition was prompted by the artist’s sudden and untimely death. It is a tribute exhibition affording us yet another opportunity for an encounter with his work, which possesses enormous positive energy.

Without being a retrospective, the exhibition covers various periods and tendencies in the artist’s work. Part of the exhibition is devoted to early works completed in the early 1970’s, which the artist was planning to present in a separate exhibition. The latter constitutes a project demonstration the artist’s approach to his work and his commitment to the creation of art.

The exhibition is comprised of dozens of drawings dating to various periods of his career that had special value to the artist. Having been created every day and everywhere, those are not preliminary sketches or works meant for presentation at exhibitions, but rather works having a life of their own, indicating a separate trend in the artist’s life.

The exhibition also features some of Edmond Demirdjian’s last works, retrieved from private collections and his studio. The exhibition highlight is the artist’s signature image, namely “the hanging turbots”.

An artist and a musician, Edmond Demirdjian goes down in the history of Bulgarian art as a prominent figure, having filled galleries and concert halls with his bright colours and explosive rhythms. He managed to create his own distinctive style, characterized by the fantastically colourful atmosphere his works exude.

Curator: Maria Vassileva

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Edmond Demirdjian (1951-2009) graduated from the Academy of Arts, Sofia in 1978, majoring in mural painting, to become part of the art scene at home and abroad. He organized numerous solo exhibitions. He worked in the fields of drawing, collage, painting and graphic arts. In 1994 he was granted a US green card for extraordinary ability in the field of art. In the period between 1994 and 1998 he split his time between the USA and Bulgaria. In 1995 he was awarded the prestigious Pollock-Krasner Foundation Fellowship for painting. In 2006 he was granted the Sofia extraordinary merit award for exceptional achievement in the field of art and culture, as demonstrated by the “Unexhibited Works by Edmond” Exhibition at the 6 “Shipka” Gallery, Sofia. His career as an artist may be divided into several periods: 1978-1983, when he created figure compositions, interiors and still-life in a constructivist manner; 1983-1987, when he painted mainly grotesque figure compositions using tempera paints in expressionist style; following 1987, when his art started becoming more and more influenced by abstract expressionism. In 2008 he opened a gallery of his own, namely the "Edmond Studio and Salon" at the 21 “March 13” St in Sofia. www.edmondartist.com, http://edmonddemirdjian.blogspot.com

PETER DOCHEV 75th Anniversary of the Artist

14 September 2009 - 11 October 2009

Peter Dochev’s name is associated with the birth and development of industrial landscape in Bulgarian art during the second half of the twentieth century. The Sofia City Art Gallery exhibition commemorating the 75th anniversary of his birth aims to give a comprehensive idea of Peter Dochev’s work following his evolution as an artist.

Peter Dochev entered the Bulgarian art scene in 1963 to become a permanent fixture on it. His work is characterized by the emphasis on solid form, no-frills composition and the fine nuancing of colour. Peter Dochev’s work during the 1960’s is best illustrated by works such as “On the Bus”, “Worker”, and “Metallurgical Workers”. Human figures are big, taking up most of the space on the canvas. Painting backgrounds are “clear”. They do not contain excessive or insignificant detail. Peter Dochev was not afraid of emptiness. He joined forces with it to attain higher emotional expressiveness. His 1970’s industrial landscapes are characterized by a “clear” background, concentration on details or form configurations. The artist tried his best to make art out of each element of the depressing reality of the Kremikovtsi Metallurgical Complex. Using purely artistic means, Peter Dochev stood his personal and artistic ground, acting like an objective observer.

In the late 1970’s and the early 1980’s the artist created a great number of urban landscapes. There came a moment in Peter Dochev’s artistic development during the 1980’s, when the landscape left the bounds of nature. Colourful spots and relieves stand out from the black background in “Black Earth”, “Charred Earth”, “Terrain”, “Old Vineyards”, etc. Peter Dochev’s work during the 1990’s is characterized by the absence of specific imagery. During the 1990’s he started off with the comparision between relief, or pure forms to embrace the use of purely geometrical shapes like the circle and the square.
In 2000 he started concentrating on the black colour to later pass on to gold as a sign of eternity. In his last artworks the artist attains a total synthesis, based on the geometry of the circle and the square. They are signs of the purity of forms, containing the concentrated emotion and extreme expressiveness of the gesture of creation.

Peter Dochev had an acute sense of highlighting the essential and significant. This facilitated his smooth and consistent progression from analysis to synthesis, from nature to an absolutely clear form bearing the meaning of a sign.

Peter Dochev was born in 1934 in the village of Lesidren, District of Lovech. In 1956 he finished the High School of Arts in Sofia as a disciple of the artist Ivan Hristov. Over the period 1957-1959 he studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts, Sofia with Prof. Iliya Petrov and Prof. Nenko Balkanski. Between 1960 and 1975 he was a chief artist at the Kremikovtsi Metallurgical Complex. In 1963 he started regularly participating in group exhibitions and in 1967 he became a member of the Union of Bulgarian Artists. Over the period 1975-2005 he lived and worked in the village of Lesidren, District of Lovech. He died in Sofia in 2005.