site.btaAcademia Gallery Presents Exhibition Marking Centenary of Georgi Baev's Birth

An exhibition on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Georgi Baev (1924-2007) will open on March 21 at the Academy Gallery of the National Academy of Arts. The exposition will be on display until April 15, the organizers said on Thursday.

The exhibition includes works from the collection of Burgas Art Gallery "Petko Zadgorski" and from the family collection. There are 42 works that trace different periods in Baev’s creativity - from the earliest graphic works of the 1950s to the 1960s, when Baev firmly chose painting as his creative creed.

Georgi Baev is a significant and emblematic name, mostly associated with landscape painting from the second half of the 20th century. He was born in 1924 in Burgas. He graduated from the National Academy of Arts (1949), majoring in painting under professors Ilia Petrov and Dechko Uzunov. In the late 1960s and early 1970s Georgi Baev moved away from direct copying of nature, oriented towards abstract lyricism and the conventionality of the landscape fragment.

His most mature period was the 1970s and 1980s, a time of dynamic creative activity. The sea became a major theme in his work. In 1983 his studio was set on fire; hundreds of works were destroyed. In 1986, Baev was awarded the Herder Prize of the Vienna Academy of Art. He is featured in the 34-volume Dictionary of Art by the London publisher Macmillan. The present exhibition features paintings from the Memory and the Barriers series. Georgi Baev was a member of the Seventh Grand National Assembly (1990-1991). He died on February 18, 2007 in Burgas.