CAUTION: Fresh paint! – this is the title of the summer exhibition on at the Sofia City Art Gallery until 6 September. And the paint is “fresh” because the 33 painters taking part with their works are young, their average age being 30. According to culturologist Vladia Mihailova their works are important to the gallery because it is a museum and is putting together a collection of modern art. That is why the latest processes emerging in art are so important to the Sofia City Art Gallery, processes logically connected with the young generation of artists. On the other hand it is essential to understand the times we are living in, times that have helped shape the works by these artists. And one other thing – a great many young artists have been emigrating, so the Sofia City Art Gallery and the Vaska Emanuilova gallery which is part of it have been endeavouring to collect works by them. The reason – it is essential that works of theirs are left here, in Bulgaria.

The exhibition features works by artists who have graduated here, in Bulgaria. Others have studied abroad: in Vienna, Berlin, London, in Canada… Some have graduated here and gone abroad later. But most of the works are by artists who have graduated the National Art Academy in Sofia. Is it possible to make a comparison between works created here and works created abroad?

“On the one hand it is a good thing that mobility has meant borders no longer matter as they did for previous generations: there used to be a clearly defined “here” and “there”. Bulgaria and the world, Bulgaria and Eastern Europe, Bulgaria and America,” says Vladia Mihailova. “Artists now travel all the time, they are here and there. And this boundary of national culture, of a specific environment is no longer as definitive for them as it was for previous generations. But the downside of this is that the environment here, in Bulgaria is not as supportive, it does not offer them enough opportunities to keep them here, often it does not even show it is interested in what they are doing.”

Why is it so important for the gallery to display and buy works by young artists? Adelina Fileva, Director of the Sofia City Art Gallery:

“I would like to start by saying that the Sofia City Art Gallery’s work is targeted at different periods and different generations. We have been adding to our collection because we are a museum, we have over 8,000 works, but we think it is essential that we support young artists, the next generations. We have been buying works for our collection for years. We aim to fill in the blanks by purchasing works by authors we already have but also to include young talents in our collections. We have been watching their development. Some of them were discovered by the Sofia City Art Gallery with their first exhibitions mounted at the Vaska Emanuilova gallery under different projects. So the Sofia City Art Gallery has been making a very careful analysis through the years and it is our desire to present exhibitions of works by different generations and in different genres: painting, black and white drawing, modern art, photography, sculpture. We are glad to say that our summer exhibition features young artists so that our audience will be able to get to know them, to see their works, to understand the problems that concern them. They will come to know that they are young people constantly on the road, shuttling between Bulgaria and the world, that they have had their successes abroad. And that is a very good thing because they are a new and different generation, a generation whose thinking is not confined by any boundaries. At the same time it is a generation that has a sense of the problems of Bulgaria but also of the world.”

English version: Milena Daynova