Vasil Valev, Milko Bozhkov, Svilen Blazhev and Stanislav Pamukchiev – watercolor 22.05.-04.06.2025

STEPS IN TIME – GENERATIONS

DEDICATED TO VASIL VALEV

Authors: Vasil Valev, Milko Bozhkov, Svilen Blazhev and Stanislav Pamukchiev

watercolor exhibition – from 22.05. till 04.06.2025

Arte Gallery’s exhibition is a project that won in the session of the Ministry of Culture for targeted funding of projects in the field of visual arts. The idea, as the title “Steps in Time – Generations” suggests, is to look for the continuity between generations in Bulgarian art and the ways in which traditions remain alive. A teacher and three of his students from the 1960s at the Sofia Art School meet. Today their names need no special introduction. Milko Bozhkov, Stanislav Pamukchiev and Svilen Blazhev have long established themselves with the scale of their creative presence. Vasil Valev (1934 – 2021), a long-established professor at the Academy of Arts, made significant contributions to the development of Bulgarian watercolour painting in the second half of the twentieth century. But what unites these artists, so different in profile, in the present exhibition? Vasil Valev’s watercolours remain connected to the visible world, unlike the almost abstract works of Svilen Blazhev, which, with their characteristic sweep of gesture, are bold and expressive even in their chambered sheet format. The aestheticising line that defines Milko Bozhkov’s late work seems to lead here too along the thin boundaries between drawing and painting. Stanislav Pamukchiev’s watercolours are yet again complex and intellectually intense.Four different directions, and yet they are linked above all by their shared beginnings in the late 1960s – the first steps, the lessons, the rediscovery of the world with youthful boldness but with trust in the teacher’s guidance, and above all – with absolute dedication and uncompromising adherence to the basic and well-learnt lessons. In the years 1967-1969, for the young teacher Vasil Valev, this was the first class at the high school. The teaching practices were devoted to painting and, with particular intensity, to watercolour. It is no coincidence that the exhibition today shows only works in this technique. It was Vasil Valev who, with his piety for the great Bulgarian watercolourist Nikola Marinov (1879-1948) and his conviction in the qualities of watercolour as a complete and autonomous painting technique, became its apologist and populariser. Not only did he establish himself as one of the masters of watercolour in contemporary Bulgarian art. A significant result of his efforts in the direction of new thinking is the initiation of the major artistic forums for watercolour in Targovishte, the International Plein Air and National Watercolour Exhibitions. “He gave us watercolour,” says Stanislav Pamukchiev. And in fact, by revealing to his young colleagues the plastic possibilities of a technique, he taught them, above all, integrity and purity in their attitude to art itself.

Anelia Nikolaeva, May 2025