Until the 18th September an exhibition of 55 pieces of art by one of the greatest Bulgarian artists, Dimitar Kazakov-Neron (nicknamed after Roman emperor Nero), is available to the public in the National Art Gallery in Sofia. Where does the nickname come from? Kazakov liked telling about his student years while he used to live in the attic of the Art Academy with his friend Todor Baltev. During those years Kazakov used to work as a stoker too. He studied ceaselessly on his own in the studio of the Academy. Once while throwing coal in the furnace, Baltev said to Kazakov: “You have got a bang like Nero’s.” That is where the nickname comes from. We talked with the curator of the exhibition Suzana Karanfilova about his art experience and the heritage he left.

“Dimitar Kazakov is among the artists with an accentuated uniqueness of style and that is what made him very interesting even during his own time. Apart from his enormous amount of works, he also had a very interesting personality and a myth about him emerged in the 1970s and the 1980s. His items are widely collected. Even during early display in Paris, Athens, New York and also in Italy foreign collectors began searching for his works. That is the time Kazakov understood that he was an artist who was very much appreciated. In Bulgaria too - many of his paintings are bought off both for galleries in Bulgaria and for private collections.”

What are his subjects and characters?

“His work is tightly related to folklore, the national tradition, the history of civilizations. Among the main characters is that of the woman in all her reincarnations as a mother, a beloved one, a wood-nymph - in a great variety of marvellous compositions.”

In which spheres of the visual arts does Kazakov work?

“Dimitar Kazakov worked in the spheres of painting, aquarelle, drawing and ceramics. With his brother he worked with plastic arts too. In the Specialized Museum of Woodcarving and Icon Painting in Tryavna there are more than 490 pieces of art, which are endowed by the brothers Dimitar and Nikola Kazakov. In this museum there are many different arts shown all together.”

His work has inspired the creation of critical analyses and biographical books. Famous art critics write about him.

“There is a great amount of specialized literature written about Dimitar Kazakov. In my opinion, the main part written comes from the member of The Bulgarian Academy of Science - Aksiniya Djurova. Ruen Ruenov, Georgi Shapkarov, Dimitar Pampulov, the great intellectual Dora Vallier, the sister of the erudite Petar Ouvaliev have also written about him. Kazakov's work is inimitable indeed. He created his own world in his paintings. He called this art “inverted space”, in which the figures fly freely in a vacuum with elements typical of his work: fountains, birds, sliced apples. And all of this comes in a gold colour range, with the special techniques of scratching. Each painting is a discrete fantastic world. Even in his lifetime art critics had reached the conclusion that his style enriches in an exceptional way the history of contemporary Bulgarian art. And they dedicated to it the well-deserved attention.”

Why was it vital for you to recall to the public the place of the talented artist Kazakov in our art?

“My concept was to show those of Dimitar Kazakov's paintings, which are part of the state collections. And also my idea was to show the paintings, which are bought at the end of the 1970s and the early 1980s. Then he used to make many one-artist exhibitions, which, in my opinion, are the highlight in his art work. We wanted to emphasize what he achieved in his large paintings. This exhibition shows paintings from 15 galleries in the country. The National Art Gallery, the Sofia City Art Gallery, the Art Gallery in Pleven (where the Endowment Collection “Svetlin Roussev” is) are among them. We received 16 paintings from the Specialized Museum of Woodcarving and Icon Painting in Tryavna. This kind of exhibition has been in the making for many months.”

In addition we should say also that Kazakov has left a legacy of many works abroad as well. During the years he regularly took part in joint art exhibitions in Sofia, Berlin, Sao Paulo, Ankara, Washington, Paris, Düsseldorf, Tokyo, New York, Madrid, Basel, Nimes and so on. He mounted more than 40 one-artist exhibitions in Bulgaria and abroad.

English version: Atina Dimitrova