Artist Ivan Kanev was one of forty artists on whom the Minister of Culture Marian Bachev conferred the Golden Age Award for the Day of the Holy Brothers Cyril and Methodius, the Bulgarian Alphabet, Education and Culture, and Slavic Literature, celebrated on 24 May.
The initiative to award Kanev was launched by the ‘13 Centuries of Bulgaria’ National Endowment Fund, which made its proposal to the Ministry of Culture at the beginning of 2025. Kanev’s contribution as a painter and graphic artist, as well as the significance of his entire oeuvre, his undeniable merits to Bulgarian culture, and his involvement as a donor to the Fund, were emphasised.
‘Ivan Kanev is an artist who belongs to the generation of artists born in the 1930s. Throughout all his years of creative work, Ivan Kanev has proven his innate sense of beauty and natural artistic erudition combined with sensitivity, a spontaneous expression of his viewpoint and keenness of observation. This entitles us to see, in his oeuvre, an artist who ranks high and worthily in the galaxy of Bulgarian artists,’ the proposal fundamentally stated.
Kanev is one of the donors to the NEF ‘13 Centuries of Bulgaria’. Over the years, he has displayed his works in many solo exhibitions organised by the Fund and has also made donations. At the opening of his exhibition in 2024 at the Prof. Vasil Gerov Hall of NEF ‘13 Centuries of Bulgaria’, Kanev once again donated a work of his to the Fund. Art historian Prof. Chavdar Popov, DA, presented the exhibition, stating that the artist occupied a worthy place in contemporary Bulgarian figurative art.
2025 marks the 90th anniversary of Kanev’s birth.
At the official ceremony organised by the Ministry of Culture at the National Gallery, Ivan Kanev, along with other colleagues of his, was awarded the medal for his ‘Contribution to the Development of Bulgarian Culture’.