site.btaPompidou Centre in Paris Acquires Painting by Bulgarian Surrealist Artist Georges Papazoff

A painting by Bulgarian surrealist artist Georges Papazoff (1894-1972), who became prominent in Paris and worked and died in France, has been added to the collection of the Georges Pompidou National Centre of Art and Culture in Paris, art historian Maria Vassileva said on January 27. "A saga has ended successfully," Vassileva commented on social media.

Everything started a year ago, when Pompidou Centre Director Xavier Rey was in Bulgaria at the invitation of the French Institute. Rey visited a Georges Papazoff exhibition at the National Art Gallery in Sofia, curated by Vassileva. The guest was sincerely impressed by Papazoff's art and voiced his deep regret that the Pompidou Centre did not own any of his artworks. Rey talked personally to Georgi Vassilev, whose collection formed the backbone of the exhibition, thus starting negotiations for donating a work by Papazoff to the French museum, Vassileva said.

The painting was selected after a careful examination of the collection personally by the director of the Pompidou Centre and surrealism specialists. They finally picked Reverie (1925), oil and sand on canvas, 72.5 x 60 cm, signed and dated. The acquisition committee approved and accepted the painting earlier in the outgoing week, and it is now owned by the Pompidou Centre, Vassileva said.

She explained that the choice of the painting was based on the prospects for its successful integration in the museum's collection and the need to highlight the name of Georges Papazoff as one of the most prominent figures in surrealism and world art in the first half of the 20th century.

Georges (Georgi) Papazoff was born in Yambol, Bulgaria in 1894 and died in Vence, France in 1972. Throughout his 78 years, he trod a long path from the Bulgarian countryside to the major European capitals. He lived in Prague, Vienna, Munich and Berlin before settling in Paris in 1924. According to the 1982 Dictionary of Surrealism compiled by writer and art historian Edouard Jaguer, "Papazoff is undoubtedly one of the forerunners of what we now call the 'abstract surrealism' of the mid-1920s, alongside Miro, Ernst, Malkin, and Masson." His oeuvre is also associated with expressionism, cubism, fauvism and dadaism; his infinite imagination sent him on journeys in different stylistic directions and to diverse zones of consciousness. Difficult as it is to categorize him within a single movement, Papazoff certainly bore the spirit of discovery and experimentation of the first half of the twentieth century, the National Art Gallery in Sofia said.