Bulgarian Printmakers: Woodcut Print Artists

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Bulgarian Printmaking Artists
Woodcuts
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Compilation and text contributed by Arafat Al-Naim
E-mail: ar_alnaim@yahoo.com

The woodblock prints in the Bulgarian printmaking practice (The task of this article is not historical, nor is it analytical; it’s an overview to show the most typical and finest work of the best known and most active Bulgarian woodblock artists.)
Bulgarian graphic art has its own entirely definite, rich and complex aspect. The creative spirit of the Bulgarians is not alien to the fundamental structure of graphic art, to its poetic essence and its vibrating power. In the medieval icon and in Bulgarian mural paintings, but chiefly in the Old Bulgarian miniatures, there are elements, which, as far as plastic idiom and style are concerned, belong to graphic art, rather than to painting.
The real beginning of Bulgarian woodblock prints is in the middle of 19th century, during the national revival period when the foundations of Bulgarian culture were laid. Two formal trends; appear in the graphic works of the Revival periods, which are patriotic and educational in content: a striving to imitate ‘academic’ European drawing, and the continuation of the old Bulgarian “style of painting”; the second is the better and more skillfully manifested in woodcuts.

The woodblock prints flourished in Bulgarian monasteries. Cheep and appreciated woodblock prints were bought by visitors to religious centers. As early as 1822 in the Vratza monastery there was a woodblock-printing workshop.
Similar workshop was founded in the famous Rila monastery. On the road to Rila monastery lays the town of Samokov renowned for its woodblock printing school. Two families the Karstoyanovs and the Klinkovs dominated the woodblock prints in Bulgaria till the liberation. The graphic charm and purity of style of prints were appreciated with certain delay by the following generations, and ties with it were gradually broken, as with the icons and mural paintings of olden times and the National Revival Period. The other trend continued in graphic art after the liberation from ottoman domination.

The creation of new Bulgarian culture in the newly liberated, poverty-stricken country was a difficult process and in this period there was no graphic art to speak of, nor could one think of any continuity of the kind that existed in European art at the time, despite the noble efforts made only by the artists of the day- Nikolai Pavlovich, for instance – to “Modernize” and “Europeanize” Bulgarian art, and not to allow graphic art to lag behind. In a modern sense, graphic art only come into being in Bulgaria in the “twenties” or rather the early thirties of 20th century. This reappearance is more definitely connected with the name of Vassil Zhariev (1895-1971), who not only restored continuity with the prints of the Revival period, a continuity that had been broken in many respect, but succeeded in modernizing this continuity and in laying the foundations of a fully contemporary art, such as we perceive it and accept it today.

Influenced by the revolutionary contents and the expressionism in the graphic works of Massreal and Kollwitz, and after several years spend in Paris the graphic style of Pencho Georgiev (1900-1940) has been defined.
The new Bulgarian woodblock prints, which underwent various stages of development up to present, began with the works of Vassil Zahariev, Vesselin Staikov (1906-1970), Dimiter Draganov (b.1908), Georgi Gerassimov (b.1906), Sidonia Atanasova (b.1909), Yuli Minchev (b.1923), Zlatka Dubova (b.1927), Preslav Kurshovski (1905), Petrana Klissourova (b.1908), Binka Vazova (b.1909), Vladimir Korenev (b.1912) Metodi Mitev (b.1918), Evtim Tomov (b.1910), Zaphyr Yonchiev (b.1924), Georgi Penchev (b.1924), Pencho Koulekov (b.1924), Elka Zaharieva (b 1928), Galilei Simeonov (b1929), Mircho Yakobov (b. 1930), Vido Vulov (b.1930), Mihail Petkov (b.1933), Ivan Kozhouharov (b. 1934), Violeta grivishka (b.1937),Lyuben Stoyev (b. 1939), Ralitsa Nikolova (b.19 ), Vassil Popov (b.19 ), Zdravko Zahariev (b.1937), Anton Petkov (b.1928) and other graphic artists feature the contemporary woodblock prints in Bulgaria, possessing its own characteristic features, and at the same time its typical representative, striking talents and lasting works.

The characteristic features of contemporary Bulgarian woodblock prints are free development of creative personalities, individual styles and idioms, new plastic quests, variety in technical interpretation, and the turning to new problems and contemporary themes.

Bibliography
Tomov, Evtim. RELIEF PRINTMAKING. Nauka u Izkustvo. Sofia 1973.
Boshkov, Prof. Atanas. VESSELIN STAIKOV, catalogue. Bulgarian Artist publishing house. Sofia, 1986.
Pencho Koulekov. Catalogue, Sofia 1984.
Dora Kamenova. VASSIL ZAHARIEV. Alexsandrov publishing house. Sofia 1995.
Kirov, Maximelyan. CONTEMPORARY PRINTMAKING IN BULGARIA. Article, Art magazin N0: 6-7/ 1969.
Peter Velichkov. 100 BULGARIAN EXLIBRIS. Bulgarian Artist publishing house. Sofia, 1985.
Chouhovski Peter. MODERN BULGARIAN GRAPHIC ART. Bulgarian Artist publishing house. Sofia, 1971.