The Exhibition "Diplomacy and Art 2" is Visiting the National Academy of Arts-Burgas
On June 5, 2025, at 6:00 p.m., the representative exhibition of paintings from the Art Fund of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs - "Diplomacy and Art", part 2 will be opened at the "Atelier" gallery of the National Academy of Arts - Burgas Branch.
The event is part of the rich program to mark the 20th anniversary of the establishment of the State Institute for Culture under the Minister of Foreign Affairs and is being implemented within the framework of a strategic partnership between the National Academy of Arts and the Institute. The exhibition also coincides with the holding of a meeting of the Council of Rectors of Higher Education Institutions in Bulgaria, which will take place at the same time in Burgas.
The exhibition "Diplomacy and Art" presents works of art from the collection of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and is a kind of continuation of the exhibition of the same name from 2019, dedicated to 140 years since the establishment of the Bulgarian diplomatic service. The selection was prepared by the State Institute for Culture and presented in a number of national and regional museums and galleries.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Bulgaria has been creating a collection of works of fine arts remarkable in volume and artistic qualities for decades. In the building of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Sofia alone, the collection numbers over 400 works, and nearly 2,000 are exhibited in Bulgarian diplomatic missions abroad.
The current exhibition has been renovated and includes 22 emblematic paintings from the collection of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs by established Bulgarian artists from the post-war period, who managed to preserve the achievements in the field of fine arts of previous generations of artists, adding their own creative searches. The exhibition has been successfully presented in Sofia, Skopje, Podgorica, Cetinje, Sarajevo and Tirana.
Among the presented authors are artists from the 1940s and 1950s – Konstantin Shtarkelov, Denyu Chokanov, Atanas Mihov, Zdravko Aleksandrov, Vasil Stoilov, as well as those from the 1960s – Vladimir Manski, Vanya Decheva, Todor Dinov, Boris Nenov, Vladimir Goev. The main emphasis is on landscapes, reflecting the mission of the fund – to create an aesthetic environment in official and representative spaces and to present Bulgarian fine art around the world.
The exhibition also traces the new trends in Bulgarian art from the 1970s and 1980s, characterized by their simplified forms, national style elements, associative and monochrome painting. Among the authors are Naiden Petkov, Andrey Lekarski, Georgi Bozhilov, Yordan Katsamunski, Svetlin Rusev, Georgi Baev, Svilen Blazhev, Stoyan Tsanev, Veliko Marinchevski, Ivan Milev.
The chronological conclusion of the exhibition is set by two works by the world-famous Bulgarian artist Altsek Mishev, who has been living and working in Italy for years. His miniature on wood reproduces his emblematic action “Swimming across the Atlantic” (1979–1982), carried out on board the ocean liner “Queen Elizabeth – 2”. For the Burgas exhibition, the collection has been enriched with the new donation from the artist – the work “Wind”, provided as a donation to the art fund of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs a month ago in his hometown of Acqui Terme, Italy.
The event is being realized with the media partnership of the Bulgarian Telegraph Agency.
The exhibition will be on view until the end of June in Burgas.