Bulgarian Art Permanent Exhibition

At present the City Art Gallery of Plovdiv holds 7210 works, of which 2310 paintings, 2580 graphic works, 545 sculptures and applied arts works, 574 icons, 1234 works of Mexican art and 93 photographs.

 There are exceptionally representative collections by Georgi Danchov-Zograph (1846-1908), Stanislav Dospevski (1823-1878), Nikolay Pavlovitch (1835-1894), Mikhail Lyutov (1887-1965), Hristo Stanchev (1870-1950), Tsanko Lavrenov (1896-1978), Zlatyu Boyadjiev (1903-1976), Georgi Atanasov (1878-1950), Kroum Djakov (1909-1976), works by most members of the Society of South Bulgarian Artists (1911-1945) as well as by the generation of the second half of the 20th century – Georgi Bozhilov (1933-2001), Yoan Leviev (1934-1994), Kolyu Vitkovski (1925-1998), Encho Pironkov (1932), Dimitar Kirov (1935-2008), Hristo Stefanov (1931), etc. The Plovdiv artists from the late 20th and early 21st centuries are well presented, too. The exposition is displayed in the building of the Girls’ High School, designed and built in 1881 under the guidance of the architect Joseph Schnitter. It is arranged chronologically on both floors and consists of over 200 original works of art, tracing the development of Bulgarian fine arts from the Revival Period up to now and presenting outstanding artists and typical trends of style. There is a lot of information available in Bulgarian and English.

The Plovdiv collection is one of the richest, containing works from the early periods of Bulgarian art. The painting section was started with the earliest dated Bulgarian secular work of art (1812), i.e. the portrait of St Sophronius of Vratsa, the originator of modern Bulgarian printed books and champion of church and political independence.

 There are works by the great Bulgarian Revival Period artists who worked before the Liberation and in the first years after it. The collection contains the best known and most authentic portraits of Vassil Levski and Polixenia Stambolova painted by Georgi Danchov; Stanislav Dospevski’s graduation painting from the St. Petersburg Academy; portraits painted by the first professors at the Academy of Arts in Sofia, Anton Mitov (1862-1930) and Ivan Murkvichka (1856-1938); “Servant” by Konstantin Velichkov (1855-1907), Minister of Education from 1895 to 1899 and founder of the Academy of Arts in Sofia; and many others.

 Among the exhibits are works by the most pronounced representatives of Bulgarian art: Hristo Stanchev, Tseno Todorov (1877-1953), Goshka Datsov (1885-1917), Vladimir Dimitrov – the Master (1882-1960), Tsanko Lavrenov, Zlatyu Boyadjiev, David Perets (1906-1982), Sultana Souroujon, Dechko Ouzounov (1899-1986); artists of the second half of the 20th century: Svetlin Roussev (1933), Atanas Patsev (1926-2000), Genko Genkov (1923-2006), Georgi Baev (1924-2007), Chavdar Pashev (1928), Ivan Kirkov (1932-2010), Emil Stoychev (1935); and also modern artists who mark the originality and uniqueness of contemporary Bulgarian artistic culture and its relationship with European art: Nikolay Maistorov (1943), Andrey Daniel (1952), Vihrony Popnedelev (1953), Stanislav Pamoukchiev (1953), Vassil Stoyev (1950), Svilen Blazhev (1953), Vulchan Petrov (1947), etc.