BED OF GRASS

24 September 2013 - 20 October 2013

The exhibition celebrates the 80th anniversary of the birth of Lyuben Dimanov – a prominent artist of diverse talents, as testified by his noteworthy contribution to various art genres and respectable presence on both the Bulgarian and the European art scenes.

Lyuben Dimanov’s art is among the most significant phenomena in Bulgarian visual arts. One of the leading figures having blazed the trail of new approaches to visual art in the 1960’s, he left a mark that contributed to the development of graphic arts and illustration in our country, creating idiosyncratic, memorable and monumental imagery. The tamed energy of his etchings or water colors, paintings, collages or illustrations move the viewer with its forcefulness and conclusiveness, as well as with the fine nuances of subtle sensitivity. Dimanov’s drawing, which is decorative and elevated, powerful and exquisite at the same time, is not only an introduction to the art of depiction, but also a bridge to spirituality.

The SCAG exhibition features selected works belonging to the genres of painting, graphic arts, drawing and collage, presenting various periods of Lyuben Dimanov’s artistic development, starting from the early 1960’s through to the present day. The centerpiece of the exhibition is a 10-piece series of paintings devoted to the ten commandments. Bibliophile editions such as “The Flowers of Evil”, “Sonnets”, “The Divine Comedy”, “When Flame and Rose Become One” are reminiscent of the highest peaks of the artist’s career in book design and illustration. Staying true to his identity in both his early works created in Bulgaria and his mature works created in Paris, the artist reveals the product of years-long artistic development, constituting a blend of expressiveness and spiritual messages.

An exhibition catalogue is available.

JULES PASCIN DE VIDIN PARIS

17 September 2013 - 21 November 2013

After a 38-year hiatus, owing to the extraordinary effort of the Embassy of France in Bulgaria, our country will host a retrospective exhibition of world famous artist Jules Pascin. It features 115 artworks belonging to the genres of painting, watercolor, drawing, graphic arts, collage, contributed by private collectors and art galleries in Paris, Luxemburg, Oslo, London and Tel Aviv.
Julius Mordecai Pincas, known as Jules Pascin, was born on 31 March, 1885 in the city of Vidin. In 1892, his family moved to Bucharest. Pascin graduated from high school in Vienna. Between 1902 and 1905 he received training at the art academies in Vienna, Budapest, Munich and Berlin. He contributed to the “Simplicissimus “ magazine published in Munich. In 1905, he moved to Paris, where he met his future wife, Hermine David. In 1907, he organized his first solo exhibition at Paul Cassirer’s gallery in Berlin. In 1914 he left for New York, where he lived until 1920. He traveled to the Southern states and Cuba. Then he went back to Paris, where he lived until his death in 1930.
In his relatively short life, Jules Pascin spent time in some of the world’s most vibrant cultural centres, namely Vienna, Munich, Berlin, Paris and New York. His art was far from being an isolated fact, it was rather part and parcel of what was going on in the first half of the 20th century. Having had a taste of the global changes in the ways art was viewed at the very turn of the century and having lived in one of the centres of artistic innovation, Vienna, he seemed to always find himself where things happened. As an active participant in the Munich and Berlin art scenes, Pascin reflected in his paintings the influence of Art Noveau, and later – of expressionism. Recognized as a genuine part of the School of Paris, the artist has invariably been associated with the Paris art scene. Having lived in the USA for seven years, where he was granted citizenship, he was the source of influence for a certain circle of American artists.
The “Jules Pascin – From Vidin to Paris“ exhibition allows insight into the artist’s rich and versatile legacy. It features plenty of drawings, a genre the artist attached great importance to. The exhibition includes early works created in 1905, when he started contributing to the Munich-based “Simplicissimus “ magazine; works created up to 1914 during his first Parisian period; 1914 –1920 works from his American period; as well as works belonging to his second Parisian period, which lasted until his death in 1930.
Pascin’s art can understood only when viewed as a whole, considering all the influences and changes internalized by him through the years. His participation in the Vienna, Munich and Berlin art scenes played an important role in the development of
his style. That is why it was essential to include drawings from this period in the exhibition. This highlights the importance of the early years, which are frequently overlooked. The inclusion of artworks from Pascin’s American period is another serious contribution of the exhibition. Besides the sketches of New York streets, there are drawings made by Pascin during his travels around the American South and Cuba, which are of particular interest as they reflect a somewhat unknown part of his legacy as an artist. They convey the immediacy and freshness of the very first impression, of drawing on the go. Yet, it is this type of artworks that clearly reveal the artist’s ability to “draw first sight portraits”, to elicit ready compositional solutions from chaotic reality, to bring the line’s dynamics and the stroke’s liveliness in tune with the rhythm of the journey. These drawings add to Pascin’s image as an artist who was hungry for the impressions created by reality, who could be inspired by a plain object, who sought for this type of inspiration, surrendered to the latter and willingly let himself be guided by it. The exhibition also features drawings made in Tunisia – another favourite destination of the artist, where he went on several occasions.
The exhibition includes artworks belonging to all major themes and genres, namely nude body, portrait, compositions based on Biblical and mythological themes, erotic drawings, illustrations, travel sketches, etc. The exhibition reveals Pascin’s legacy, duly presenting each distinct period of his artistic development. This creates a more dynamic image of the artist, and a sense of the latter’s restless and impulsive spirit and character, which drove his artistic moods in various directions and subjected the artist to different influences and tests.
The exhibition provides the opportunity to view all aspects of Jules Pascin’s artistic persona, namely the draftsman, the illustrator, the cartoonist and the painter; the master nude body, portrait, figure composition and landscape painter, the lyrical bard and the master of satire. Missing any of these aspects would make his image incomplete. Lively and dynamic as a person, he did not linger at the same place for a long time as an artist either – he was bound to search, change and alternate themes and genres. This is Jules Pascin – a restless genius, one of the most intriguing representatives of his time.

There is an exhibition catalogue in Bulgarian and French, including all artworks featured in the exhibition.

The research paper “Jules Pascin and Artistic Developments at the Turn of the 20th Century”, compiled by the exhibition’s curator Maria Vassileva was published (again in Bulgarian and French) as a separate edition.

Curator: Maria Vassileva
Exhibition team: David Weizmann, Adelina Fileva, Ilinka Chergarova, Petar Dimov, Nadezhda Danailova, Albena Charbanova, Kapka kaneva

Bulgarian Artists in Vienna. Contemporary Practices at the Beginning of the 21st Century

12 September 2013 - 13 November 2013

The democratic process of opening up of Bulgaria after 1989 as well as the economic conditions of life and the lack of adequate education caused the exodus of a large part of the creative intelligentsia. Both historically and geographically the nearest attractive destination in the developed Western European world turned out to be Vienna, now seen as an gravitational center for many artists. The access to education, the well developed art system and the possibilities for integration were the decisive factor when choosing a new “homeland”. Today numerous artists of Bulgarian origin live and work successfully in Vienna. It is this vibrant and current reality that provided motivation for the exhibition.

Most of the participating artists graduated institutions for higher artistic education in Bulgaria and afterwards continued their studies in the art schools of Austria. The exhibition showcases 18 of them: Adriana Czernin (special participation), Plamen Dejanoff (special participation), Mara Mattuschka (special participation), Svetozara Aleksandrova, Borjana Ventzislavova, Vasilena Gankovska, Irina Georgieva, Nestor Kovachev, Lazar Lyutakov, Michail Michailov, Alexandar Peev, Maximilian Pramatarov, Krasimira Stikar, Kamen Stoyanov, Kosta Tonev, Iv Toshain, Desislava Unger and Sevda Chkoutova.

Parallel to their activities in Austria most of the participants maintain working contact and take an active part in the artistic process in Bulgaria. Life between two countries and contexts transforms their art into a phenomenon that is symptomatic for the changing world on the threshold between the 20th and the 21st centuries. Their art reflects on two realities – the old and the new country thus having the dynamic mark of the times we are living in.

The exhibition project “Bulgarian Artists in Vienna. Contemporary Practices at the Beginning of the 21st Century” is meant to not only present quality artworks but also to analyze certain social and historical processes that are typical for the time.

This exhibition is organized in collaboration with the Austrian Embassy in Bulgaria; with the support of the Program for Culture of the Sofia Municipality and with the technical assistance of Art Project Depot.

A catalogue of 208 pages in Bulgarian and English is published.

Project initiator: HR-Stamenov.
On this project worked: Maria Vassileva, Michail Michailov, and Daniela Radeva.

eorgi Dimitrov. quadrilateral 2013

31 July 2013 - 01 November 2013

quadrilateral 2013 is a site-specific project conceived to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Kazimierz Malewicz’s Quadrilateral, commonly known as the Black Square. The piece appeared intuitively for the first time as part of the stage design for the opera Victory over the Sun in 1913. Later, in 1915, it was displayed at the Last Futurist Exhibition 0,10 in Saint Petersburg. The painting which heralded all other suprematist forms, titled Black Suprematic Square, is now an invaluable exhibit of the State Tretyakov Gallery’s collection in Moscow.

Referring to one of the very first non-figurative concepts which brought the essence of a whole new painterly and philosophical world, the installation attempts on comprising the developments of non-objective art for the past century by reducing the physical space to a two-dimensional image. Ca. 100 sq. metres of adhesive black folio sheet is applied on the floor, walls and ceilings to recreate the notorious masterpiece.

Georgi Dimitrov (b. 1980) is an artist whose work is based on the principles of non-objective and constructive art. In 2010 he founded the nonsofia association - a non-profit entity that offers institutional support for non-objective art in Bulgaria. Last year he organised orthogonal: international forum for non-objective art. Apart from an exhibition, the event included a number of documentary screenings and lectures which aimed at increasing the popularity of non-objective art in Bulgaria.

Exhibition of the BAZA Award for contemporary art nominees: Dimitar Solakov, Emilian Lalev, Iskra Blagoeva, Kiril Kuzmanov, Nikolay Zanev, Sasho Popovski, Stela Vasileva, Zoran Georgiev

18 June 2013 - 14 July 2013

Sofia City Art Gallery and Institute of Contemporary Art – Sofia together with: Foundation for a Civil Society, New York and Young Visual Artists Awards present Exhibition of the BAZA Award for contemporary art nominees.

The BAZA award for contemporary art is a part of the competition network Young Visual Artists Awards (yvaa.net), held yearly in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Kosovo, Republic of Macedonia, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia. The connection between the separate competitions is established by the Foundation for a Civil Society in New York, which provides the awards – a six-week creative residency in New York for one artist from each country. Each of the national competitions has its own name, schedule and managing art institution. Author of the name BAZA and initiator of the award itself is Maria Vassileva. The Institute of Contemporary Art – Sofia (ica-sofia.org) is responsible for the realization of the competition and organizes it together with the Sofia City Art Gallery.

The award winner’s stay in New York comprises becoming acquainted with the art scene and art life, meetings with curators and colleagues. The artists have working studios at their disposal as well as the opportunity to organize an exhibition in the space of the International Studio and Curatorial Program (iscp-nyc.org).
The BAZA award winners so far are: Rada Boukova (2008), Samuil Stoyanov (2009), Anton Terziev (2010), Vikenti Komitski (2011) and Leda Ekimova (2012).

The selection of the award winner is made by jury of well-established painters, curators and representatives of art institutions. In 2013 members of the jury are: Maria Vassileva (curator, chief curator of the Sofia City Art Gallery), Iara Boubnova (curator, director of ICA-Sofia), Nedko Solakov (artist), Boris Missirkov (photographer), Georgi Bogdanov (photographer), Olivier Boissiere (contemporary art collector), Sara Reisman (curator, Vilcek Foundation Fellow). Besides joining the jury for the second stage of the competition, the visit of Sara Reisman aims for becoming acquainted with the modern Bulgarian art scene.

In the upcoming exhibition the eight 2013 nominees will present predominantly new projects. For Zoran Georgiev and Kiril Kuzmanov this is the second nomination for the BAZA award. Their works of art as well as the ones of Iskra Blagoeva, Stela Vasileva, Nikolay Zanev, and Dimitar Solakov are already popular with the public. Emilian Lalev and Sasho Popovski exhibit for the first time. Within the exhibition the authors will display objects, installations, paintings, drawings and video.

The BAZA award winner for 2013 is Kiril Kuzmanov.

Zlatyu Bpyadjiev and Baratsite

13 June 2013 - 01 July 2013

Zlatyu Boyadjiev and Baratsite is an exhibition organized by Sofia City Art Gallery and Art Gallery - Plovdiv. It consists of two parts - the first one includes iconic works by Zlatyu Boyadjiev from different periods, and the second is dedicated to his friendship with Vassil Barakov and David Peretz - the three known as Baratsite, tracking their common path in arts, as well as the personal development of each of them.

Zlatyu Boyadjiev will draw hundreds of compositions, portraits and landscapes in his creative life, marked by a watershed - the paralysis that determined his biography as an artist. So his work is divided into two periods. The first is characterized by the classic manner of composition, and in the picturesque building up is felt the influence of the Impressionists, of Renaissance masters and old icons, but the themes are always bound by Bulgarian nature, the small town and the village, with life in them. In the second period, when he began painting with his left hand, the style of the artist changed dramatically in the direction of imagery, including dozens of figures in the compositions and colours and expressive brushstrokes. His works acquired pronounced expressiveness and dramaticism. Some of them attract with their enjoyable story, while others are filled with bizarre characters, often as a disguise of symbolic meaning.

Fate made the three future artists meet in Plovdiv, where they had their first steps in art. That road started from drawing in the ruins of Kurshum Khan tavern, from the sign drawing company, the Academy of Arts, and their common lodging in Sofia, to take them out on the trails of the Rhodope mountains. Barakov, Boyadjiev and Peretz discovered their artistic means in this soft and beautiful mountain that attracted them
for years. And while the generation of Bulgarian landscape artists before them found beauty in old houses, their yards and alleys, it was Baratsite who discovered the Rhodope mountains for Bulgarian art as a plastic and sign image. The landscape in

the works of Boyadjiev, Barakov and Peretz is not just a beautiful view, but a specific creative attitude and mindset, depending on the purely subjective standpoint and feeling of the author.
Massive arrays, deep valleys, Rhodope style houses, curved paths, people and animals that inhabit them - they all possess the integrity and the forms that excited the three artists. They were attracted by the power of the mountain, its primary materiality, by the animate and the inanimate in it. The three artists, slowly over the decades, will walk their path from the Rhodope landscapes, through still lifes, figure compositions and portraits.
Peretz will create amazing landscapes and still life, turning them into high art. Over the years, he will go through figure composition with the means of synthetic expressive realism, reaching lyrical abstraction and progressively destructuring the image.
Barakov will be creative in still-life and portraits, but in all his works his preference will remain for the landscape genre. The artist’s early landscapes were expressive, with marked relief, saturated colour and dense texture, without minor details, but with synthetically achieved and simply expressed form. He was one of the first Bulgarian artists who developed industrial landscape. At a later stage Barakov created paintings, impressionistic in spirit.

So Zlatyu Boyadjiev, Vadsil Barakov and David Peretz subscribed to the history of Bulgarian art with the common direction in their young age, their personal individual contribution over the decades, and they remained forever linked by their students’ nickname Baratsite.

On the occasion of the exhibition was issued a bilingual (Bulgarian and English) catalogue of 100 pages with 114 reproductions, a comprehensive biography of Zlatyu Boyadjiev and a complete bibliography of the three artists.

The exhibition was organized with the collaboration of the Art Galleries in: Burgas, Varna, Vidin, Gabrovo, Dobrich, Kazanlak, Lovech, Pazardjik, Pernik, Pleven, Plovdiv, Ruse, Sliven, Smolyan and Stara Zagora, as well as the Academician Svetlin Rusev, the National Art Gallery, the Boyan Radev collection, the State Agency of archives, the Municipal Institute Ancient Plovdiv, the National Library in Plovdiv, The National Library Ivan Vazov - Plovdiv, section Local History, the Regional State Archives - Plovdiv, the Regional Museum of History in Blagoevgrad, The organization of Jews in Bulgaria - Shalom.

After Sofia, the exhibition will be shown in the Art Galleries of Plovdiv and Stara Zagora.

MESSAGES OF LIGHT

17 May 2013 - 02 June 2013

The exhibition is among the events featured in the Second Paper Art Biennial, held within the framework of the Sofia Paper Art Festival 2013. The biennial’s current edition, comprised of 19 exhibitions in various Sofia venues, has broad international representation.

The selection of artworks, exhibited under the “Messages of Light” motto, high-lights the specifics of paper art from the vantage point of various traditions and cultures around the world. With its fragile structure, which is a combination of primeness and exquisiteness, delicacy and playfulness, elegance and grotesqueness, mundaneness and magic, paper is a material affording artists countless opportunities for creative reconsideration of the world. Many of the artworks were developed as nature forms, others feature elements of script, folklore traditions, poetic confessions. This involved the use of various manual paper-casting technologies, as well as of recycled and scrap paper. The imagination and artistic freedom paper is approached with by artists transform the mundane everyday material into a delicate spiritual message.

The exhibition features 27 artworks by 13 artists: Harald Metzler - Austria, Eva Toker - Argentina, Gail Stiffe and Jassica Wong - Australia, Irene Rammensee and Helene Tschacher – Germany, Sun Young Kang - Korea, Veroniquies Sapin – France, Yoshio Hasegawa – Japan, Ferry Staverman – the Netherlands, Magda Sobon – Poland, Aidee Bernard – France and Kathrin Dardel – Switzerland.

Most of the artists participating in the exhibition are members of the International Association of Hand Papermakers and Paper Artists (IAPMA). Many of them came to our country specifically for the festival and the presentations included in its programme. Helene Tschacher was a long-time president of the association, while annual paper art congresses help promote successfully new trends in this kind of art.

Two presentations will be delivered at the Sofia City Art Gallery-hosted exhibition: one devoted to recycled paper and its products, introducing new trends in the cre-ation of various constructions, and a lecture entitled “Paper in China” to be deliv-ered by Liu Ian Gracely, curator of international sculpture events.

ARENAS - A LIFE BETWEEN CINEMA, SMALL SCULPTURE AND PAINTING

09 May 2013 - 10 May 2013

The jubilee exhibition organized in SCAG traces precisely the essential directions of exploration and evolution in the artistic trajectory of Petko Bonchev.

The exposition brings forth a rich and diverse creative heritage that seems engaged in equal measures in cinematographic stage design, in small sculpture and in painting.
Having initially chosen architecture in 1952 Petko Bonchev graduates from the State School of Polytechnics in Sofia to be able two years only later to find a home in the world of cinema. He gets employed in the Boyana Feature Films Studio and his allegiance to this institution will last a lifetime. There he will work as Production Designer on such films as The Inspector and the Night (1963), A Bit of Heaven for Three (1965), Karambol (1966), Taste of Almonds (1967), The Prosecutor (1968), The White Room (1968), At Each Kilometer (1969 – 1971), Typhoons with Gentle Names (1979), I Don’t Live One Life Only (Nikolai Ghiaurov 50) (1981), Salvation (1984) and others. And while designing this roll of battle epics for the silver screen, Petko Bonchev will be methodically creating an intimately personal poetic realm of images – paintings and small sculptures.
This exquisite heritage of the artist, which he himself revealed in a few solo exhibitions before his death remains insufficiently explored and unfamiliar to the public. The present exhibition in the SCAG offers the opportunity to perceive Petko Bonchev from a specific point of view that by all evidence makes it possible to recognize in the small sculptures the symbiosis between production design and painting and the seamless fusion of expressive means that transform the movie frame into a painting and infuse the painting with the vitality of a cinema scene.

The exhibition includes works from the fund of the SCAG and private collections, as well as photographic testimonials from the Photographic Archive of the Bulgarian National Cinematheque.

The exposed photos are the work of: Irina Peeva, Donka Jolova, Lothe Mihailova, Krum Kostov, Jeni Vulova, Georgi Rusinov, Elena Dimitrova, Mladen Chavdarov, Krassimir Arabadjiev, Lena Hurtarska, Todor Kostov, Kornelia Antonova, Nikolai Gospodinov.

The Exhibition is created in partnership with the Bulgarian National Cinematheque, the National Film Center Executive Agency, the Artist Author Association, the Music Author Association.

Georgi Tenev. A MONUMENT OF MY MEMORY

06 May 2013 - 07 May 2013

Writer Georgi Tenev’s project “A Monument of My Memory” offers an archival and biographical reading of a specific historical fact and the way it is perceived today. It represents 200 photo reproductions of commemorative plaques with the names of Bulgarian soldiers and officers having died in the two Balkan Wars and World War One (1912-1913).

Through the years, the fate of these plaques has been unenviable. They were parts of a memorial which existed in the vicinity of what is today the National Palace of Culture. The monument with the roll of honour of Sofia’s 1st Infantry and Veliko Tarnovo’s 6th Infantry was damaged during the 1944 bombing raids and was completely removed in the 1970s during the construction of the Palace of Culture and the development of the surrounding area. The rolls of honour have been preserved in the repositories of the National Museum of Military History, but all attempts and initiatives over the past 20 years aimed at restoring the monument in one way or another have been unsuccessful.

The putting up of these photo reproductions coincides with the centenary of the wars in which Bulgarian soldiers and officers gave their lives, and with the 75th anniversary of the inauguration of the original Roll of Honour Memorial.

Georgi Tenev has implemented this project jointly with sculptors Natalia Todorova, Ivana Nencheva and Iliya Novachev, designer Gars, photographers Krassimir Stoichkov and Petar Yordanov and film director Lyubomir Pechev.

Nadezhda Oleg Lyahova

01 May 2013 - 12 May 2013

The video installation FRAMES includes 6 projections dedicated to various visual and social limitations. In three of her videos: The Inexorable Nature of the Renaissance, The Irresistible Charm of Impressionism and The Irrefutable Argument of Conceptualism (created in 2012–2013), the artist comments upon trends in visual art, namely Renaissance, Impressionism and Conceptualism, posing unambiguous questions about the potential liberties and limitations of each one of them. She adds to them the 2005 work Talk, which is actually a spontaneously recorded conversation between artists about some of the most prominent names in the history of painting.

A counterpoint to the above is the video Burden, where the artist tells a personal story from her childhood – the time when aesthetical preferences are shaped together with a system of views pertaining to one’s overall perception of the world.

In Elusive Images (2012), within the framework of five minutes and 45 seconds, Nadezhda Oleg Lyahova offers us her vision of the surrounding world, evidently shaped by all opportunities and limitations considered until that moment. Visual layering and the acquired social experience contribute to a multifaceted and well-rounded view. Hence the diverse “readings“ of the world, which resemble image layering in a video.

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Nadezhda Oleg Lyahova was born in 1960 in Sofia, where she works and lives. The artist is known for her ability to “capture“ and re-create the most delicate, frequently invisible, states of objects, people and human interrelations. Her ability to notice what others fail to see, to discern the nuances even in the most everyday situation and the most ordinary event places her among the most sensitive contemporary artists. Her more prominent solo exhibitions include: eco stories, Sklada+, Sofia, 2011; Globally and on a Long-term Basis the Situation Is Positive, Sofia City Art Gallery, 2009, Moderate Optimism, 6 September Street, No.9, Sofia, 2008; Nadezhda Oleg Lyahova, Centre for Contemporary Art, Pancevo, Serbia, 2008; The Lions of Sofia, Artists' Association fabs, Warsaw, Poland, 2006 and the Goethe Institute, Sofia, 2005; Vanitas, Yokohama Museum of Art, Japan, 2004. She is the winner of the Gaudenz B. Ruf Award for 2009.