13 October 2004 - 07 November 2004

This exhibition is connected with the 70th anniversary of the great Bulgarian painter. It includes 82 drawings, watercolors and pastel, created from1977 to 1993. Among them, there is the cycle of 30 erotic ink drawings created in the period from 1981 to 1985 and are shown to the audience for the first time.
The drawing always had a special place in the Yoan Leviev’s rich and artistic course of life of versatile and dynamic creative activity. Looking for revelation, an intimate confession and at the same time- a correction of his personal achievements and a bridge to new plastic discoveries, the painter finds in painting a pure and independent way towards creative expression. 
The ‘Drawings in Private’ exhibition is an attempt to come near, and with respect and compassion, to the intimate world of the creator, in the silence where the roots of his profuse and vivid art are. 

05 October 2004 - 15 October 2004

The Vanitas Exhibition presents a performance of the same name and a series of Digital still lives.
Nadezhda Oleg Lyahova: "Without any claim for authorship but rather for co-compilation, I combine in the series of digital still lives an image taken from the street (a picture of a casually passing-by woman in a dress with painted flowers) with computer-generated background. The image is entirely technically reproduced and unites digital reality with “ordinary” reality. It juxtaposes chance in life with the infinite regularity of numbers. Again there’s the fundamental problem of finitude – a human figure against the infiniteness of the computer-generated background.
Digital still lives, reproducing an assembly reality, express the infinite bearing of finitude, filled with hope and fear. The Vanitas Performance offers a momentary reality, filled with the meaningless dignity of life in itself and presents an opportunity for direct physical participation in this moment."

24 September 2004 - 15 October 2004

The Sofia Art Gallery presents Stoyan Illiev on his 70th anniversary. The exposition has a retrospective nature and includes paintings and sculptures from 1965 to the beginning of the year 2004. 
Stoyan Illiev belongs to that generation of Bulgarian authors who entered artistic life in the 60’s of the 20th century and is committed with significant changes in our art. 
With his very first artistic works of monumental impact, he attracted the audience’s attention.
Since mid-60’s, he has been a participant in a variety of joint art exhibitions and has organized one-man shows and since 1970 he has participated in graphic art, illustration and book layout exhibitions in Bulgaria, Italy, France, Russia, Czechoslovakia.
His inclination towards the monumental and conditional in the shape and color, towards the structure, the relief, the volume, the plane, the power and vibrations of the tint leads him to the creation of ceramic tessellations, wall paintings, sgraffito or wooden sculpture.

22 September 2004 - 10 October 2004

Transparency is the main quality of glass – the material that in the hands of Konstantin Vulchev can vary from a concrete object to its abstract reflection. The fifteen glass sculptures are ‘transparent’, but they also reflect the author’s discoveries – artistic metamorphoses of favorite styles or simply - objects. The carefully thought over and balanced cubist, expressive, art deco elements form part of the author’s provocations. His works emanate strength and softness, brilliance and color. In a feeling of feedback and perspective, the eye of the connoisseur can discover all this and feel the artist’s creative temperament and brilliant precision supported by solid technological knowledge.

16 July 2004 - 17 September 2004

The works in the Sofia City Art Gallery collection have entered it in various ways during its history of 75 years. For the last 15 years the only source for filling the fund have been donations by the authors themselves, by their inheritors, by separate individuals or collectors. Gradually, during the period 2001-2004 a collection of 264 donated works has been formed in the Sofia City Art Gallery. Of them: 142 canvas paintings, 108 graphic art works, and 13 sculptures.
Priceless in its contribution is the donation of Lika Yanko, who in her lifetime bequeathed 82 paintings to the Sofia City Art Gallery. Through them, the development of the style of this great Bulgarian artist, the change in artistic language, the directions of creative search could be traced.
Not long ago, Professor Roumen Skorchev donated more than 85 graphic art works to the gallery, thoroughly representing his creative work. Separate halls of the present exhibition shall be dedicated to this outstanding collection.
The creations of the exhibition comprise the period of the 20’s of the ХХ century to the beginning of the year 2004 and are created by 54 authors belonging to different generations.

List of donators: 

“Ars milenium mmm” foundation
Assen Zahariev
Bisera Zankova
Boyan Radev
Valentin Kolev
Vassil Dokev
Vladimir Ivanov
Vula Kereklidou
Viara Georgieva
Georgi Boyadjiev
Georgi Koev
Daniela lyahova
Dimitar Vassilev
Dimitar Kotzev
Dimitar Yaranov
Dоchka Naydenova
Edmond Demirdjian
Emilia Panayotova
Emilia Staicheva
Encho Pironkov
Iva Yaranova
Ivaylo Mirchev
Ivan b. Ivanov
Yordan Paroushev
Katia Georgieva Ilieva
Kina Gosheva
Kiro Mavrov
Lika Yanko
Lili Nikolova
Liuben Kostov
Liubomir Savinov
Magda Abazova
Margarita Radeva
Marin Marinov
Martin Kalistrov
Martin Krastev
Milko Pavlov
Nadezhda Oleg Lyahova
Nikolai Shivachev
Pavlin Kotzev
Panayot Kondov
Plamena Dimitrova-Racheva
Rumen Skorchev
Samuil Stoyanov
Spartak Dermendjiev
Stanislav Pamukchiev
Stoyan Domyschiev
Yavora Petrova

15 June 2004 - 30 June 2004

Anton Terziev’s video installation “Psychotherapy” deals with the inertia of everyday life and the lack of free human will in a consumer society.
The title is a tease with the determined way of life, providing man by means of repetition of routine actions with an illusion of the adequacy of his existence, turning him into a puppet of the system. 
The conformist character accepts the established rules of the game without trying to resist or change them in the name of a higher cause. 
In this work Anton Terziev investigates the process of personality deconstruction in a similar type of society. The individual’s free will that has become stunted seems to be a direct consequence or regularity, and in any case it is the easiest form of survival. 
At first glimpse Psychotherapy is a comic domestic story, concealing however a tragic existential problem. Anton uses allegorical but sharp language to describe the conflict or rather the horrific refusal of open conflict between the individual and the system. The videos are built up according to the black comedy principle, where nothing is what it seems.
Packaging plays an essential part in the installation. Boxes and labels appear as symbols of mass production, of consumer expendability, of multiplication, of consumer society, of dehumanization of art.
The motif of multiplication and serial circulation is implemented on artistic level by presenting the same genre scene in three versions, where the character at one time is the teller, next time is the personage and the third time is the watcher as well as by the incessant replaying of the story again and again. All of that directly corresponds with the feeling of a vicious circle, of the closed system, in which the character’s life is just a link in the chain. 

Yana Kostova

03 June 2004 - 18 June 2004

For a better world is an exhibition created on the initiative of the Human rights Service of the UN High Commissioner and the National Academy of Arts. It includes 43 posters of more than 20 participants – students and teachers inspired by the human rights topics. The authors use texts form the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rightsthat includes principal civil cultural, economic, political, and social rights and has become the milestone of contemporary human rights legislation. 

27 May 2004 - 22 June 2004

‘Biographies of the body’ is a cooperative project of three young female artists from Sofia which have united themselves around the issue of the corporeal, its presence or absence, the laying up of desires, fictions, meanings, limitations it has to bear. The project’s putting into effect is made through a multimedia action including three separate presentations of videos, prints and photo-installations.

14 May 2004 - 27 June 2004

This is the first large-scale retrospective exhibition of the great Bulgarian artist Ivan Penkov in Sofia after 1958г. His multiple creative interests found expression both in the area of applied and plastic art. The exposition presents for the first time his projects for carpets, theatre scenery and posters and wrought iron furniture and. It also offers the most comprehensive glimpse on his creative life – about 200 paintings, graphic art works, drawings, applied art works and also photocopies of tinted glass. 

artists from Sofia which have united themselves around the issue of the corporeal, its presence or absence, the laying up of desires, fictions, meanings, limitations it has to bear. The project’s putting into effect is made through a multimedia action including three separate presentations of videos, prints and photo-installations.

05 May 2004 - 30 May 2004

Vaza Maryanov has created architectural sculptures, drawings and photographic collages for this exhibition. He made them especially for the Budapst, Beograd, and Sofia tour by looking for the connection of the capitals of three countries with three different language and culture dimensions with their situation and history.