National Gallery for Foreign Art

I DO NOT SEEK. I FIND: PABLO PICASSO
December 17, 2008 – March15, 2009

The Great Master

As a painter…

As an engraver…

As a ceramist…

As himself…

PICASSO IN BULGARIA

On December 16, 2008 at the halls of the National Gallery for Foreign Art an exhibition of the great Spanish painter Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) was unveiled, under the name “I do not seek, I find.” The exhibition was organized by Barouch and Partners, with the financial support of Mobiltel. It was be on display for three months – until 15 March 2009 inclusive. After Leonardo da Vinci, Picasso was the next genius whose works were shown to the Bulgarian audience, owing to the mobile operator’s ambitious project called “World culture”.

Unconditionally, Picasso is the symbol of 20th century modern art, regardless of the fact that some apologists and deniers are still arguing whether he was the most audacious revolutionary, whether he was a destroyer or a unique innovator, or a universal genius, similar to the Renaissance titans. However, no one doubts that he was the most famous, the brightest, and the greatest painter of his time, whose dove embodied the world’s dearest hope.

Though based on scarse information, in Bulgria, Picasso has become known in the first decades of the 20th century. The information came mostly from the accounts and letters of Bulgarian painters and intellectuals. One of them was the surrealist George Papazov, who had settled in Paris. Among those who met Picasso, were also painter Vladimir Dimitrov – the Master and landscape-painter Kosta Grekov, but the only person who had true continuous professional contact with him in the following decades, was the French researcher of Bulgarian origin Dora Vallier (Uvalieva) who contributed to the 17 volumes of Bibliography 1932-1966 of the painter’s creative work.

Picasso became really famous in Bulgaria later – in the 1960s when, according to art expert Kiril Krustev, “in spite of the late, scarce and one-sided information, his name occupied a central place in the consciousness of painters and public – in the field of contemporary modern art.”

The first significant collection of Picasso’s original works visited Bulgaria in 1984. At that time, at the Sofia Art Gallery, the painter’s late prints, mostly etchings created in 1970-1972 from Peter Ludwig’s collection, were on display.

The National Gallery for Foreign Art preserves around twenty graphic works (etchings, litographs etc.) and one bibliophile edition illustrated by him. Many of them were on display in the late 1980s, within the exhibition “From Goya to Picasso” and within the repeated presentation of the complete graphic collection of Spanish masters at the National Gallery for Foreign Art during the last few years.

The exhibition comprised 86 works of art collected from some of the major museums and private collections of Picasso’s works from Malaga, Barcelona and Madrid, with the exclusive cooperation of the Embassy of Spain in Bulgaria. The selection illustrated the scope of Picasso’s creative power with a wide range of means of expression, in different types, genres and techniques – 43 graphic sheets, 18 ceramics, 22 drawings, paintings and mixed media works, water-colours and offset prints.

Twenty-four unique photographs of Picasso were also presented, taken by his friend, French photographer Lucien Clergue. They allowed the visitors to take a glimpse at both the personal and the artistic world of the painter – his family background, creative process and public life.