site.btaCartoons from Socialist Period to Be Displayed in Sofia

Bulgarian cartoons from the period between 1944 and 1989 will be put on display at the Museum of Art from the Socialist Period in Sofia between November 2, 2023, and March 31, 2024, the National Gallery said.

The exhibition includes some 150 Bulgarian cartoons from the National Gallery's collection, including works by Ilia Beshkov, Alexander Zhendov, Boris Angelushev, Stoyan Venev, Boris Dimovski, Donyo Donev, Asen Grozev, Georgi Anastasov, Tsvetan Tsekov - Karandash, Georgi Chaushov and Stefan Despodov, the organizers said.

According to Nikolay Ushtavaliyski, curator and deputy director of the National Gallery, the exhibition aims to recreate the cartoon genre from the totalitarian regime which controlled political, social and cultural life in Bulgaria between 1944 and 1989. In his words, back then, the cartoon’s place was in the newspaper. The majority of the exhibited cartoons had appeared on the pages of the Shturmovak [Stormtrooper] weekly and the Chasovoy [Sentry] paper - a specialized paper for the Bulgarian army fighting the Nazis on the battlefronts of Yugoslavia, Hungary, and Austria. In 1946, the first issue of the Starshel [Hornet] weekly humor newspaper came out, its title having since become a byword for Bulgarian cartoon art, Ushtavaliyski explained.

From a modern point of view, it is difficult to understand the meaning of socialist cartoons without being familiar with history and the essence of the times in which they were created. On the contrary, it is cartoon art that gives today’s people a chance to reconstruct the not-so-distant past, he added.