site.btaBulgarian Cultural Institute in Paris to Host Georges Papazoff Exhibition

Twenty-two originals by artist Georges Papazoff will be exhibited at the Bulgarian Cultural Institute in Paris alongside works by Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Andre Derain, and Jules Pascin. The exhibition Georges Papazoff. Homecoming will open on October 30 and run until December 5, exhibition curator Maria Vasileva told the Bulgarian News Agency on Tuesday. The exhibition is organized by the Bulgarian Cultural Institute in Paris in partnership with the Georges Papazoff Foundation.

The event is dedicated to the Bulgarian-French artist who was a modernist and important figure in European art. The exhibition presents early paintings by Papazoff from the 1920s, as well as from his later years in France. The selection traces the visual and thematic evolution in his art – from experiments with surrealist form to more abstract and philosophically saturated compositions, the organizers explained.

All works are part of the private collection of Gueorgui Vassilev – a collector and patron who has been promoting Papazoff's work in Bulgaria and abroad for years with the mission of restoring his name among the greats of European modernism.

The organizers of the event note that Georges Papazoff. Homecoming will also include several works by artists with whom Papazoff shared his time, environment, and artistic circle in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s. They complement the context and reveal Papazoff's connections with the leading figures of the artistic avant-garde between the two world wars.

According to Vassilev, the exhibition in Paris comes at a time of heightened international interest in the work of Papazoff. In 2024, the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris accepted his painting Dreaming (1925) into its collection – a donation from Gueorgui Vassilev – and included it in its permanent exhibition, alongside works by Salvador Dali, Yves Tanguy, Giorgio De Chirico and Rene Magritte. In 2025, a solo exhibition of Papazoff’s work was presented at the National Museum of Modern Art in Zagreb, and in 2022, the National Gallery in Sofia organized a major retrospective of the artist's work entitled Georges Papazoff – The Illuminator. In early 2025, a commemorative plaque was placed on his last house in Vence, southern France, on the initiative of several Bulgarian artists and with the support of the Bulgarian Cultural Institute. 

Papazoff (1894–1972) was born in Yambol. He left Bulgaria at a young age and spent the next 10 years living in Prague, Vienna, Munich, and Berlin. During this period, he found his calling, learned from the most progressive artists, and experienced firsthand the pulse of the European avant-garde scene. Papazoff shared the fate of a number of great artists who, at the beginning of the 20th century, were attracted by the artistic charisma and irrepressible intellectual drive of Paris.

He arrived in the French capital on January 1, 1924, where he quickly made a name for himself on the art scene, worked with famous gallery owners and dealers, and was written about by the most prominent critics of the time. He participated in exhibitions in Paris, Milan, Prague, Chicago, Sofia, and other cities. His talent was supported by collectors and patrons.

In 1926, he was invited to participate in the International Exhibition of Modern Art at the Brooklyn Museum in New York. Papazoff also published literary texts, including a book dedicated to Jules Pascin, an autobiography, collections of essays on art, and novels.

In 1960, he settled in Vence, southern France, where he spent the last 12 years of his life. Critic Edouard Jaguer wrote that he was "one of the precursors of what we call abstract surrealism," and Jean-Paul Crespelle called him "a surrealist before surrealism." Although he lived and worked in France, where he found his calling and fulfilled himself as an artist, Papazoff never severed his ties with Bulgaria, where he returned several times for exhibitions and lectures. Today, his works can be found in museums and private collections around the world.