Varna Montmartre

There was a time when the world was ordered. Do you get it? Yes? The working class, there was no other, the rest were liquidated and expropriated, was falling into two categories: men and women. Those “ drugari and drugarki” for their part were two categories – workers and peasants.  “ It is a good thing that on 9^th September workers were those who took over the authority and not the peasants – the Director of the Biotechnology Institute whose design department I created was saying – as I am now a scientific worker and otherwise I would have been a scientific peasant!”

Art had the task assigned by the party to present these basic notions of life in a realistic manner and with high from excitement face expressions and compositions. Is it clear?! So ... that is how the world looked through the life-affirming eyes of colleague Vera Moukhina back in 1975.

Nonetheless Varna has always been an open city. Sea, tourists, smuggling .. you can not nail the windows shut. And the feeling and the urge towards a more colorful, more free and spontaneous way of living and creating art, was constantly sprouting in every way. It was a natural process. No matter how many generations of white sheep you paint red – there will always be white born.

White sheep between our colleagues were held up with ignorance into the mainstream of the figure and realism, but trends of constructivism, expressionism and surrealism via formal experiments forced their way through. The figure broke into a collage of unrelated realistic pieces and the composition from static and parade became "more so." "More so," is the term that comes to replace the lack of conceptual and theoretical thinking through associations. The other term was "more vigorous" However, this clearly identifiable trend has changed art view in the country from Socialist to Associative Realism. The experiment spirit was lost out of control and had at least to be far from Sofia ... Varna turned into this free place.

Varna Montmartre  was his spontaneously arisen - and so natural medium. In this direction a door open to normal professional world has evolved, far away from Sofia – the door of the true normal art of Varna International Graphic Bienniale. The members of the spontaneous community of Varna Montmartre became its natural leaders and organizers. The wall (The Iron Wall) was pierced under control. In Sofia they knew that the time of the Potsdam agreement was expiring, that changes would come and had to be immortalized with monuments, while the new sprouts that in 10 years would lead the New Age were being patronized. 10 years before the Perestroika.

You think I imagine stories. It’s True. However Mirjana Basheva came in my garage to talk, six months after her father was killed. Her father had created a new economic model and it was being tested like Texim. An alternative to the socialist economy. Yes. Texim bank as you know it now. But we did not know it at the time. The authority-holders knew it. The authority holders were ordering monuments. Monuments in Varna looked like that:

Monument of Bulgarian – Soviet friendship

Alyosha Kafedjiisky and Evgeni Baramov Varna, 1975

Their sculptors had the right of a large sculpture hall, and we without the rights were renting garages in proximity to the City Market. (Business itself after the coup emerged from garages located at almost the same place). I was the youngest - I was only 21. Petio Marinov, Joro Lechev and Kolio Nikolov, were already serious artists and men in their 26-27 years. Graduates of the University of Tarnovo and discriminated by Sofia Academy had also found shelter in the garages. Later Mitko Traychev came from Moscow and brought the Underground and Jazz with high professional international standards, and with him Mary Zafirkova. Maria did come from Prague. This spontaneous community grew like a snowball and marked the direction towards free – even though it was not yet free. Or at least not free in the meaning we understand it now. Only at that time in our garages the sound of Miles Davis was played and not "Podmoskovnie vechera." That is where I created my debut work "Seated Figure". 1979.

1979. My father was seized at the border. He was sentenced for 12 years. 150 days he was kept in "odinochka" in the basement of the General Directorate of Milizia. Do you know what odinochka means? It is an underground concrete room the sizes of 1.50 x 1.50 x 1.50m. A bucket. A mug. Beaten two or three times a week. With a bag full of sand – the shot causes internal bleeding but there are no external traces. Exquisite work, right? "One third did not make it out – my father told me years later – We were tied on a double ladder, arms and legs stretched and they were striking us in the stomach."

1979. I got married. I created “Seated figure”. I received invitations  for my solo exhibition in Athens. From the City Hall. Because I did not have rights, institutions prosecuted me. They seriously prosecuted me. A kind of a paid training :)

You have studied what comes next in art history. After seven years together with Lubo Prahov, we succeeded to realize this exhibition. It crossed the border in a sealed wagon. 7 years of adventures. Not an asylum. A Camp. The socialist camp.

The Garagists,

who later founded Vulcan:

Mitko Traychev
Maria Zafirkova
Dobrinka Banova
Kolio Nikolov
Joro Lechev
Venko Ivanov
Petio Marinov
Vesso Dimov
Toni Ignatov
Stoycho Nikiforov
Kiril Yanev
Todor Tachev

I met Joro Lechev a few months ago.

Hugs. Joy. We talked about the beginning of contemporary art in Bulgaria. The scandal with my exhibition in 1982 is considered as the beginning point!

A scandal cannot be the beginning of something meaningful – a scandal would launch scandals!

-          There is no way, Joro, to talk about contemporary art without Mitko Traychev!

-          Of course there is no way!, Joro replied angrily.

Did you get it? Take notes. Contemporary art is not a system of provocations and show parallel to the Normal Art as taught and practiced in our country. Do not be surprised. Basics and terminology of academic from that time are not yet lived over. I integrated in a museum exposition the work of socialist philosopher and ideologist Academician Todor Pavlov titled "Einstein or Engels? Judge for yourself. " Edition of BAN from 1955. They are still studying Art as Fine Art. You think this is all past. History. No, alas.

I went to see Mitko Traychev recently and told him about our conversations with Joro and my desire to dedicate the first exhibition in club-gallery Sculpture Park Varna to the garagistes. We remembered who were they and when. I told him that Joro has kept an article from 1977 published in the newspaper "Narodno delo" entitled "Varna Montmartre." You saw it foregoing. Can you imagine what impulse contained the title at that time? And can you imagine how it looks now in the Institute of Art Study?

Here's the gallery. It is still under construction.