site.btaExhibition Dedicated to Urban Landscapes Shows Three Generations of Bulgarian Artists

The Varna Art Gallery on Thursday opened an exhibition dedicated to urban landscapes, presenting 37 artists from three generations of Bulgarian art, said chief curator of the gallery Rumen Serafimov. He said that the exhibition, which can be seen until May 16, gives people an opportunity to meet various stylistic interpretations from realism, impressionism, expressionism, neo-primitivism, to modern autonomous painting.

According to him, this genre in fine art has been developing in Bulgaria since the very beginning of the 20th century. The earliest Bulgarian author in this field was Nikola Petrov, who created poetic pointillist paintings of architectural landmarks in Sofia and Vidin. Nikola Tanev, Danail Dechev and Boris Denev are also representative of impressionism, while Tsanko Lavrenov dedicated quite a few paintings to the romantic urban atmosphere of old Plovdiv, noted Serafimov.

Some of the paintings in the exhibition are made by artists who began their creative journey in the 1920s and 1930s, which according to Serafimov, was a very strong period for Bulgarian art. Among them are Boris Denev, Danail Dechev, Vera Nedkova and Dechko Uzunov. Their landscapes retain realistic credibility and carry romanticism, while they also instill calm, poetic moods. Serafimov found only Hristo Kavarnaliev to be more expressive, while he defined Vera Nedkova as modern and her conventionality to border on abstractness.

Another large group of artists presented in the exhibition appeared on the art scene in the 1960s. Among them are the artists Daria Vassilyanska, Margarita Deneva, Hristo Vekov and Yordan Yordanov. Their works, according to Serafimov, are much more conventional in form of structuring of the compositions and linear proportions of the architectural motifs. Andrey Daniel offers a lively, sensual and completely liberated artistic view of a famous street in Varna, said Serafimov.

The exhibition also shows paintings of significant names of the latest Bulgarian art such as Georgi Bozhilov, Lyuben Zidarov, Svetlin Rusev and Rumen Gasharov.