site.btaBulgarian, Dutch Artists Show “Pictures from Two Lives” Exhibition in Plovdiv

Exhibition titled “Pictures from Two Lives” by Plovdiv-based artist Tsvetana Yaneva - Gumelya and Dutch painter Barbara Henkes opened on display at Labyrinth Art Gallery in Plovdiv on Tuesday, gallery owner Elena Kalpakchieva told the Bulgarian News Agency.

In the exhibition, Tsvetana Yaneva - Gumelya participates with oil paintings from the 1990s, which have not been shown before, and Barbara Henkes - with dry pastel drawings in various formats.

What connects the two artists, besides their kinship, is that they both show drawings and paintings in which central characters are humans. All the rooms of the gallery are full of people, even when there is no one, explained the gallery owner.

There are large paintings and delightful miniatures - capturing people at different moments of the day, moments when they are resting, thinking, dreaming. Some of the drawings were made during the COVID-19 pandemic, when people were confined inside their homes or at most their terraces, noted Kalpakchieva.

She added that the other main character in Barbara Henkes' contemporary drawings is the smartphone - people with phones in all sorts of situations, absorbed by this not-so-aesthetic object.

Tsvetana Yaneva - Gumelya was born on April 20, 1954, in Plovdiv. She graduated from the National School of Fine Arts in Sofia, in 1973, and then from the Wladyslaw Strzeminski Academy of Fine Arts in Lodz, Poland. He has had over 30 solo exhibitions in Bulgaria and abroad. He lives and works in Plovdiv and Berlin.

Barbara Henckes moved from Amsterdam to Sofia in 2000, and then to Strasbourg in 2015. Her pastel works have been selected three times in the annual exhibitions of the British Pastel Society in London. She has had solo exhibitions and participated in group projects in Europe and Australia.