Massive exhibition of Mrkvička and contemporaries present the National Art Gallery

The exposition includes unseen works and infamous artists, who made an enormous jump in the after Liberation art of Bulgaria.

The National Art Gallery /NAG/ presents massive exhibition with unseen and forgotten work of Ivan Mrkvička and his contemporaries. That’s how the gallery marks the 160 years since the birth of the genius artist and 120 years since the creation of the painting school – the today National Art Academy, which fist director and one of the creators is precisely Mrkvička. Its destiny is connected with the first steps of building the after Liberation Bulgarian culture.

Except the portraits and the unique genre compositions of Mrkvička, in the exhibition are included 49 more artists. The overall count of the paintings is 112, and some of them are exposed for the first time. According to the organizers the exposition shows how in the patterns of no more than 3 decades the Bulgarian artists manage to catch up the centuries of lagging from the European development. Mrkvička has a leading role in this process. “We search the names, for which we know less. Names, which for one or another reason were left in the rubric “and others” and very rarely we think about them”, says Bistra Rangelova, curator of the exhibition.

In the exhibition, which will continue till 4th of September, are also shown paintings from the earliest first general art exhibition in Bulgaria, held in Plovdiv in 1892.