site.btaWorks by Bulgarian Artist Kalina Taseva Go on Display at Kvadrat 500 Gallery

Works by renowned Bulgarian artist Kalina Taseva will be on display at the Kvadrat 500 Art Gallery in Sofia, said the National Gallery. The exhibition opens April 5 and will be on until June 23, 2024.

It is the first time that Taseva is being represented at the National Gallery. Curator of the exhibition is Boryana Valchanova.

The exhibition includes artworks from the collections of the National Gallery, the Sofia City Art Gallery, the galleries in Blagoevgrad, Veliko Tarnovo, Varna, Gabrovo, Dobrich, Kazanlak, Pazardzhik, Ruse, Sliven, and Yambol. Some of the works have been provided by the artist’s heirs private collectors. 

A Bulgarian National Television film about the artist will be shown within the exhibition.

Kalina Taseva ranks as one of the illustrious figures in the panorama of Bulgarian visual art, the National Gallery says of the artist. 

She started her career in the 1950s at a time that was charged with ideological dogma in Bulgarian art. Her works remained unaffected by the going artistic fads. They were multilayered, revealing a breadth and complexity of thought, and executed with extreme professionalism. Through her powerful expression, and in a challenge to the time in which she lived, Taseva established her vivid presence in the annals of Bulgarian painting, the National Gallery says.

Leading up to the 1980s, large-format multifigural compositions on historical themes were central to her oeuvre. The forms of her earlier works are more decorative, and the line is clear and definite; while, in later works, it is more expressive and dynamic. A considerable proportion of the painter’s oeuvre was devoted to portraiture. Close friends, artists and intellectuals often served as her models.

Taseva used the same painterly power in landscapes and still lifes, which perhaps most fully revealed her artistic talent. She expressed nature’s lyrical moods in a series of canvases dating from the 1990s. 

BTA is media partner of the exhibition.