The Exhibition Diplomacy and Art II Opens in Skopje
The second part of the exhibition "Diplomacy and Art" will be opened at the National Gallery of the Republic of North Macedonia in Skopje on October 26, 2022. Partners in the implementation of the project are the Bulgarian Cultural and Information Center in Skopje and BTA.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Bulgaria has been developing, for decades on end, a fine art collection, which is remarkable in terms of both volume and artistic quality. The building of the Ministry in Sofia alone hosts more than 400 pieces of art, whereas Bulgarian missions abroad exhibit almost 2,000 works.
This Diplomacy and Art Exhibition of the State Institute for Culture to the Minister of Foreign Affairs presents 22 paintings of prominent post-war Bulgarian artists who have succeeded in carrying over the achievements of Bulgarian fine art of their predecessors, while overlaying them with their own creative insights. It is a continuation of the original Diplomacy and Art Exhibition dedicated to the 140th anniversary of the Bulgarian diplomatic service and exhibited in many national and regional museums and galleries.
The exhibition presents artists who worked in the 1940s and 1950s – Konstantin Shtarkelov, Denyo Chokanov, Atanas Mihov, Zdravko Aleksandrov, Vasil Stoilov – followed by artists of the 1960s – Vladimir Manski, Vanya Decheva, Todor Dinov, Boris Nenov, Vladimir Goev. Most of the works are paintings, mainly landscapes. This can be explained with the specific function of the art collection – to create an aesthetic atmosphere in the offices and official premises of the Ministry and the missions abroad. Tracing out the development of art imagery over the years, one can discern the new trends of the 1970s and 1980s in the art of the following generations. They are expressed in the simplification of art images, the creation of a national style with original plastic interpretations, a new materiality, the rise of associative painting, monochromatic imagery, etc. The artists presented here are Nayden Petkov, Andrey Lekarski, Georgi Bozhilov, Yordan Katsamunski, Svetlin Rusev, followed by Georgi Baev, Svilen Blazhev, Stoyan Tsanev, Veliko Marinchevski, Ivan Milev.
The final name on the list of artists presented in the exhibition is Alzek Misheff. His miniature on wood represents his performance Swimming Across the Atlantic (1979–1982) in which Misheff crossed the Atlantic, swimming dozens of kilometres a day in the swimming pool of the ocean liner Queen Elizabeth 2.
In 2022, Diplomacy and Art Exhibition was presented in the National Museum of Montenegro in Cetinje and in the Museum of Literature And Performing Arts in Sarajevo.