GRAPHIC COLLECTION OF THE
NATIONAL GALLERY FOR FOREIGN ART
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The graphic collection of the National Gallery for Foreign Art numbers several thousand items, mainly graphic prints, less drawings, watercolour paintings, and bibliophilic issues. The collection is, in the main, derived from two sources: the former foreign collection of the National Art Gallery and the fund of works purchased exclusively for the Gallery throughout a decade or so prior to its official opening in 1985. The European graphic school prevails in the collection, and of more limited scope is the art of USA, Latin America and Asia, except for two especially valuable collections of works of the traditional Japanese woodblock printing, Ukiyo-e, and Indian miniature paintings.
The fact that most works in the collection were brought together in the last decades of the 20th century when the classical values were generally distributed, and the lucky finds and accessible prices were increasingly rare occurrences, explains the prevailing number of works by contemporary authors. However, the lack of buying outs (with very small exceptions) during recent years is a serious obstacle for one of the main museum activities – to enrich and develop the collection both in terms of history of classical graphic arts and with respect to the newest art processes and experiments.
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Nevertheless, and considering the inevitable gaps, the collection as a whole gives an idea of the paths and possibilities of graphic art in a wide historical range. Different graphic techniques (woodcuts, metal engravings, etchings, lithographs, silkscreen, etc.) are demonstrated in the works by masters who have, in the relevant stages of graphic language evolution, implemented or developed them in their searches.
The works of old masters in the Gallery’s graphic fund are comparatively few. Several graphic sheets of Durer (1471-1528) created with the wood and copper engraving technique mark the peak of an epoch (end of 14th – 16th century) when the European printed graphic art, based on technical means used in the applied art practice in the past, strengthened its position as an individual type of art. The democratic significance of this art is its transformation into an image expression disseminating the message of biblical and evangelic plots among widest masses of population. The circle of old masters can, in terms of chronology, be continued with the names of Jacques Callot (1592/3-1635) with his interest to the special depth and multi-figure scenes; Rembrandt (1606-1669) with few examples of his etching works of genius (along with other works of his contemporaries); Goya (1746-1828) with the powerful graphism and gloomy visions in the sheets of his famous series (Los Caprichos, Disasters of War, Los Disparates, Tauromachia).
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The French school of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century is most convincingly represented in the collection. The graphic arts during this period accompanied and added to the searches of quite a lot of painters and sculptors translating them into a specific artistic language. Delacroix, in the person of whom the French Romanticism found its completed expression, is represented with a set of lithographic works – illustrations to Goethe’s Faust and Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and a watercolour painting drawn on both sides. In the works of Daumier (1808-1879) /the Gallery holds sheets of its famous series Les Gens de justice (People of Justice), Moeurs conjugales (Marital Manners), Bohemiens de Paris (Fellows of Paris), etc./ the exclusive plasticity of the characters of his social satire marks some kind of a peak in lithographic art. Along with the landscape moods of Camille Corot (1796-1895) created with the etching and lithography technique and the light realism of rural images by Jean-Francois Millet (1814-1875), the representatives of the so called Barbizon School, Daubigny, Dupre, Charles Jacques, are included with a small collection. In their poetic and at the same time spontaneous attitude towards the natural motif we find the purest aspects of the 19th century Realism.
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The various searches of artists of the end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th who became classics of modern art resulted in the enrichment of traditional graphic techniques, including the increased use of colour (especially after the experiments of Toulouse-Lautrec) and the related development of printing skills. Meanwhile, the gradual relief of graphics of its reproduction responsibilities as a result of the discovery of a photomechanical method of image reproduction opens a path to individual searches and experiments. This complex period of aesthetical changes, including in the manner of perceiving graphic images, is illustrated in the collection of works by Renoir, Matisse, Marquet, Utrillo, Bonard, Carriere, Vlaminck, Rouault, Leger, Kandinsky, Chagall. The figures of Jules Pascin and George Papazov, included with precisely selected collections, fall under the School of Paris (Ecole de Paris) art in a special way with the originality of their aesthetics. An important place is given to the masterly graphic sheets by Steinlen, Kollwitz, Massarel in which the power of realism and the unusual expressiveness of technique in a series of images of human suffering also imply strong criticism of social occurrances.
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The period between the two wars is illustrated in the works by a number of distinguished figures, such as Oskar Kokoschka, Marcelle Gromer, Massimo Campigli, Leonard Foujita, Maurice Brianchon belonging to different schools and tendencies and united by the spirit of time and the energy of creative temper.
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A special place is given in the collection to the works of Spanish artists of the 20th century. It is enough to mention the graphic sheets by powerful artists such as Salvador Dali, Joan Miro, Pablo Picasso, Jose Caballero, the abstract silkscreen prints of Eusebio Sempere and Manuel Rivera, the simple graphic images of Rafael Canogar, the abstract monumental implication of forms in the works by Amadeo Gabino combining colour etching with deep printing, the colourful lithographies of the living classic Antoni Clave (born in 1913), the magnificent coal drawings by the well-known in Bulgaria Jose Sancha, the deep metaphors of etchings by Jose Enrnandes, a drawing of the great Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca and many others.
Along with the classic graphic sheets by Max Svabinsky (1873-1962), the works of Vincent Hloznik, Albin Brunovsky, Vladimir Gazovic, Dusan Kallay, Chaba Reykashi – examples of refined and complex professionalism of performance – are a remarkable illustration of the paths of metaphoric image thought of Eastern European graphic art of the second half of the 20th century.
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Several satirical sheets by William Hogarth (1697-1764) and a significant series of colourful caricatures by James Gillray (1757-1815) known to the public from several Gallery exhibitions in the recent years give an idea of the English classic engraving. With regard to the works of contemporary artists, the masterly drawings of Paul Hogarth (purchased at the artist’s exhibition in Sofia a few decades ago) can be mentioned.
The names of Renato Guttuso, Nunzio Bibo, Ugo Attardi are only part of the accents in the small, but rich in content, series of Italian graphic works of the second half of the century.
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The Russian graphic art represented in a wide historical range includes names such as Nikolay Utkin (1780-1863) known mostly for his engravings after Kiprenski, Repin and Shishkin’s works whose small-format etchings add a quality touch to the readers’ image of their picturesque work, Ana Ostroumova-Lebedeva and Pavel Shilingovski, an engraver famous for his time, and representatives of the Petersburg School of Graphic Art (end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th century). The list of more significant works can be continued with an expressive lithographic portrait of Alfred Nurok by Serov, with the masterly drawings by Petrov-Vodkin and Filipp Malyavin, with the original aesthetics of Dmitriy Mitrohin’s etchings and woodblock prints. The renovation of woodblock print art at the beginning of the 20th century is illustrated with the sheets by Vladimir Favodski (1886-1964) and his disciples.
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An individual place is given to the significant collection of works by Nikolay Rorich (1874-1947) – the vivid sketches of the so called Himalayan Series some of which are already displayed in a separate room. The depicted magnificent sceneries – ranges of mountains sank into mysterious silence and solitary peaks – surrounded the artist and his friends throughout the famous Central Asian expedition during the period 1925-1927.
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Being one of the most important events in the life of N. Rorich, the main goal of the expedition was to explore the remains of ancient cultures often lost in locations inaccessible to Europeans in pursuit of the common roots of the Slavonic and Indian cultures or, more generally, of the East and the West. The drawings created during and after the expedition represent an inseparable part of this goal. The technique used by the artist in his sketches based on an ancient recipe given by a Tibetan lama helps him to create astonishing picturesque combinations in the symbolically illuminated image of nature which freshness has been preserved until today.
