B2B Magazine

This year marks the 120th anniversary of the birth of the extraordinary Bulgarian sculptor Lyubomir Dalchev. To celebrate the occasion, the Sofia City Art Gallery is presenting two exhibitions: one in the gallery itself and another one at the Vaska Emanouilova Gallery. The Gallery said having two venues aims to reveal different aspects of the artist’s diverse work.
The Sofia City Art Gallery exhibition features 40 artworks showcasing Dalchev’s decades-spanning career. The pieces reveal the development of his personal style. The notable sculptor’s story is complemented by documentaries about his life and work, as well as by video installations created specifically for the exhibition to show monuments and decorative monumental artworks by Dalchev. Despite the sculptor’s impressive legacy, his story is hard to reconstruct for various reasons, including artworks gone missing, unpublished or destroyed.
The exhibition at the Vaska Emanouilova Gallery entitled The Story Goes On… shows photographs from the artist’s studio, unfinished projects, documents and archive material, smaller scale works and drawings that had never been exhibited before.
Curators of the exhibitions are Adelina Fileva, Galina Dekova, and Krasimir Iliev.
"The topic of Bulgaria had strong influence on my father," the artist’s son, Lyubomir Dalchev Jr., told BTA during his visit in Sofia at the invitation of the Sofia City Art Gallery. Dalchev Jr. added that Bulgaria continued to be the basis for his father’s works, even after the family migrated to the United States in 1979.
Dalchev Jr. believes that the exhibition’s title Lyubomir Dalchev. The Restless Spirit accurately reflects the artist’s personality. "[To my father] it did not matter whether something was beautiful or ugly, whether it was aesthetic. Instead, what mattered was the energy it carried."
Dalchev’s son compared his father’s stature to Augustе Rodin’s and shared his wish to exhibit his father’s works that had never been shown to the public before.
Dalchev Jr. told BTA that this was his first visit to Sofia since his family migrated to the United States in the late 70s. The artist wanted to freely express his position on the injustices and inequalities in Bulgaria, which at the time was impossible due to the communist regime ruling the country. Dalchev was also upset over novelist and journalist Georgi Markov’s assassination in 1978. "That is why he felt as if like the only thing he could do about the situation in Bulgaria was to sacrifice himself and his family. Because leaving everything behind is not easy," Dalchev Jr. said.
Dalchev Jr. recalled the terrible conditions his family experienced during a stay at a refugee camp. "There were Bulgarian agents, who would take people to the Czechoslovak border. The agents wanted the people to come back. From there they transferred us to Hipping, near Salzburg. That is when two people from the Bulgarian office came to try and convince us to come back to Bulgaria," said Dalchev Jr.
When asked about the artist’s relations with the Bush family, who were fond of Dalchev’s work, Dalchev Jr. said that his father was invited to the White House for a discussion concerning Bulgaria.
When asked about seeing his father’s art, Dalchev Jr. shares that he was nearly brought to tears. "When I saw my dad in the movie [a part of the Sofia City Art Gallery], I almost cried. That is why I walked away. I had a good relationship with my father," said Dalchev Jr.
The exhibition is on until September 6.
Who is Lyubomir Dalchev
Born in 1902 in Thessaloniki, having passed through the modern schools of Rome and Paris before he went to the USA where his life’s journey ended in 2002, Lyubomir Dalchev is a unique cosmopolitan figure in Bulgarian art, the Sofia City Art Gallery says. He started his career as an artist during the 1930’s in the genre of painting. In the 1940’s, through the sculpture decoration of the Sofia Court House, he established himself as one of the most talented artists in the genre of monumental sculpture. After 1944, he created dozens of monuments, as well as memorial complexes (Plovdiv, Perushtitsa, etc.). Works such as King Samuil’s Warriors, The Prodigal Son, Job, Mauthausen, reveal the artist’s ability to present the conflicts contemporary humans are torn by against the backdrop of the drama of historical developments. Through his art of extreme compassion, Dalchev laid the foundations of a new school in Bulgarian sculpture whose success was proved by the first works of his disciples. His legacy and influence on a whole generation of artists, his awe-inspiring integrity as an autonomous artist are the reasons why modern Bulgarian sculpture and its development throughout the 20th century may be referred to as The Century of Dalchev, says the Gallery.

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