Twenty iconic works by prominent artists, from the treasury of the ‘13 Centuries of Bulgaria’ National Endowment Fund, have been moved from the Sredets Gallery of the Ministry of Culture, where they were recently presented in the ‘Donated Artworks’ exhibition.
Each of them tells a story that excites and educates.
What unites the artists, who are from different epochs, is that their sculptures, paintings and drawings were specifically donated by their creators, sponsors or organisations to the ‘13 Centuries of Bulgaria’ National Endowment Fund.
In preparation for the exhibition, information was collected that included surprising details about the artists, the donors and the history of the works themselves; this gave the Fund’s team an opportunity to embellish them for publication in a book, through which the ‘Donated Artworks’ exhibition continues its mission.
These remarkable works of art by world-renowned artists have only now been brought together for the first time!
Featured donors to the Fund include: Atanas Katchamakoff (1898–1984), Mihail Simeonov (1929–2021), Greddy Assa (1954), Houben Tcherkelov (1970), Yuri Bukov (1947), Dragan Nemtsov (1935), Elza Goeva (1928), and members of the Committee of Culture, the Dimitrina and Ignat Kaneff family, Canada, and Elizabeth and Dr Herbert Schaffer, Germany.
The book presents facts about the artists and cites excerpts sourced from monographic studies, catalogues, and articles by Bulgarian and foreign art historians, experts, and journalists, all dedicated to this collection of artists. The names of author-researchers Dora Vallier, Aksinia Džurova, Bistra Rangelova, Georgi Lozanov, Witold Dalbor, and Harry Minetree are prominent.
Many of the personal stories of the creators, which sound like a script for an enthralling series, are also retold in the publication, ‘Donated Artworks. NEF ‘13 Centuries of Bulgaria’, which the Fund is at present compiling.