from 10:00 to 18:00 o'clock
Entrance with museum tickets.

from 10:00 to 18:00 o'clock
Entrance with museum tickets.

The National Gallery presents one of the most iconic figures in the history of Bulgarian art – Zahari Zograph. This first immersive exhibition introduces a new way of experiencing the masterpieces of the the museum’s collection. Harnessing new technologies, the 20-minute project, created by Senzor Studio, brings his religious and secular masterpieces to life, revealing essential elements of his creative process.
The initiative promotes Bulgarian Revival аrt, a period characterized by economic, social, and cultural growth, closely tied to the pursuit of ecclesiastical and national independence. The period traces its origins to the mid-18th century, when Paisius of Hilendar wrote Istoriya Slavyanobulgarskaya (History of the Slavs and Bulgarians) in 1762—which profoundly shaped the spiritual awakening of the population and contributed significantly to the development of national consciousness…
The exhibition features a selection of icons, drawings, copies, letters, documents, and secular portraits from the artist’s early period. It also showcases a substantive collection of murals, ranging from his earliest works—created in 1838 for the Chapel of St John the Baptist at the Church of the Holy Virgin—Annunciation in Asenovgrad—to what is considered as his “final masterpiece,” the murals adorning the narthex of the Great Lavra Monastery on Mount Athos, completed between 1851 and 1852.
Zahari Zograph emerged as a defining figure of Bulgarian Revival art. His relentlessly inquisitive artistic spirit was ahead of its era, and his extensive body of work reflects the vitality of the approaching modern age, the artistry of traditional imagery, the strength of line, and the emotive power of color.
The project is realised with the financial support of the National Culture Fund of Bulgaria under the Creation programme 2024.
Media partners: BTA / Bulgarian News Agency and SOF Connect.

from 10:00 to 18:00 o'clock
Entrance with museum tickets.

from 10:00 to 18:00 o'clock
Entrance with museum tickets.

from 10:00 to 18:00 o'clock
Entrance with museum tickets

Ivan Hristov (1900–1987), one of the most prominent masters of Bulgarian landscape painting, created hundreds of canvases reflecting the intransient in our native nature and Revivalist architecture, recreating and preserving their rich spiritual impact. He worked in this genre alongside Boris Denev, Nikola Tanev, Sirak Skitnik, Vladimir Rilski, Atanas Staykov, Danail Dechev, Pencho Georgiev, Mario Zhekov, among many others. He was a member of the Native Art Society. The painter’s oeuvre is recognisable by its rich colour palette and expressive brushstrokes. The building elements of his style are in harmony with the material power of nature. Critics responded favourably to his strong individuality and idiosyncratic painting technique. High international recognition for the artist was the Gold Medal at the 1937 Paris International Exhibition, where he showed his painting, ‘Sozopol Houses’.

Ivan Hristov’s retrospectives have been held at the Nikola Petrov Art Gallery in Vidin (2015) and the Hristo Tsokev Art Gallery in Gabrovo (2017). The current extensive exposition comprises predominantly unexhibited works owned by his heirs and by admirers of his art, as well as paintings from the collections of the National Gallery and the Plovdiv City Art Gallery.

In 1919, young Hristov enrolled in the Faculty of Law of Sofia University and concurrently attended the Academy of Arts. He chose to study painting under professors Nikola Ganushev, Nikola Marinov and Stefan Ivanov. Between 1926 and 1927, he specialised in Painting in Munich. Towards the end of his stay there, he held his first solo exhibition at the Kunstverein Gallery, where, along with portraits, he also showed several townscapes of Tryavna.

After returning to his homeland, he was appointed as teacher at the Carpentry School in Tryavna, and became one of the initiators of the foundation of a local museum preserving the masterpieces of woodcarving and iconography. He continued his intensive creative work, presenting a series of over 50 solo exhibitions not only in Bulgaria but also abroad, including the Munich Kunsthaus Brakl Gallery (1928), the Camera degli Artisti Gallery in Rome (1930), the Turin Gallery at Palazzo Carignano (1931), the Salita di Santa Caterina Gallery in Genova, La Bottega dell’Arte Gallery in Brescia, the Salon Artistiozi Sztuki I Reproductsia in Warsaw (1934), the Sala Centrala a Atensumi in Bucharest (1935), and the Berlin Gallerie von der Heyde (1938).

His works are owned by the National Gallery, the Sofia City Art Gallery, and all regional galleries; state institutions, embassies and public organisations in Bulgaria; the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest; the National Museum in Schwerin; the Anastasia Sima Museum in Bucharest; the UN, state institutions of Germany, Russia, Poland, Romania, Cuba and Hungary; the City Hall of Rome; many private collections in Bulgaria and around the world.

Bearer of high state awards and titles in the fine arts, and honorary citizen of Veliko Tarnovo and Tryavna.

Media partner: BTA / Bulgarian News Agency.

The exhibition offers a novel, more conceptual look at one of the most prominent French artists of the second half of the 19th century, emphasising the influence he had on his contemporaries, as well as on the oeuvres of key figures of Early Modernism in the 20th century.

Although Eugène Carrière is well represented in the National Gallery permanent exposition at Kvadrat 500, his name remains relatively unknown to the general public. The team’s ambition is to present all his paintings, lithographs and drawings from the museum collection for the first time. During the research, it was discovered that these lithographs of high collectible worth were extremely valuable copies of unique bibliophilic compendia published in limited editions in Paris in the closing quarter of the 19th century. It is only the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the State Museum in Stuttgart, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the State Museum in Amsterdam, and the Cleveland Museum of Art, that can boast possession of such prints.

Carrière was among those artists who won recognition during their lifetime, and whose works were displayed in major museums. He invariably worked beyond the stylistic categories of the time without claiming to belong to any specific trend. Defying any sort of labelling, the painter, engraver and draughtsman, Carrière—a contemporary of Gustave Moreau, Odilon Redon and Paul Gauguin—soon surrounded himself with the most influential figures in the artistic and literary worlds of his time. His oeuvre influenced Picasso who drew inspiration from his monochromatic painting.

Beyond the modernity of his subjects, it is precisely in the artist’s painting style that the great adventure of his art lies. A distinguished portraitist and master of family scenes and the theme of motherhood, and precursor of Minimalism, he eliminated details transforming images into archetypes and expressions of feeling beyond the conventional framework of a specific time. Achieving a soft, monochromic sfumato allowed him to create a complex and mysterious interplay of transparency and depth. Like fleeting apparitions, elusive to the brush, his figures seem to emerge from the landscape, from the background, as if from another time-space.

The Spaniard FRANCISCO GOYA (1746–1828) was one of the most prominent and influential creative figures in world culture. He produced over 1,000 paintings, as well as the graphic series titled Los Caprichos, Los Desastres de la Guerra, Tauromaquia, and Los Disparates.

His stylistic and philosophical spectrum had a strong influence on the subsequent dynamic development of art, defining him as the last of the Old Masters and one of the earliest of Modernism. His extensive output—paintings, graphics and drawings—served as a leading aesthetic principle for many artistic trends of the 19th and 20th centuries, including Impressionism, Expressionism and Surrealism.

The twenty-one prints from the National Gallery collection follow Goya’s development from his earliest etchings, influenced by Diego Velázquez’s style, to his peak achievements as a social interpreter, remarkable for his sharpness, and a chronicler of dour events and complex human characters. The high artistic level of his four graphic series has left a deep imprint on the history of art.

The National Gallery houses seven works from Los Caprichos (The Caprices) series, 1799. Satirising the institutional pillars of power, the church, the Inquisition, the parasitism of the feudal nobility, and the decay of the moral values of social classes, was the reason for the series to be banned from exhibiting.

Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War) series, which Goya began ca. 1810, and returned to ca. 1820, was not published by the artist during his lifetime. One of the works is titled ‘Prisoner. The Custody Is as Barbarous as the Crime’. It is considered unique, as it is rarely found in other museum and private collections around the world.

La Tauromaquia (The Art of Bullfighting) series, probably created between 1815 and 1816, reflected the artist’s interest in bullfighting. These works combine the flagrant cruelty of the corrida and his admiration for the skill and exciting action of the games. Of the thirty-three prints in the series, the National Gallery owns five.

While still working on La Tauromaquia, the artist in all probability launched into another series titled Los Disparates (The Follies), the meaning in his time being along the lines of stupidity or madness. The fantastic compositions are encrypted allegories whose impressive depth fascinated artists such as Baudelaire, Hugo, and Delacroix. The National Gallery’s collection houses four of those; two of them—‘Little Bulls’ Folly’ and ‘A Way of Flying’—are emblematic of the artist’s genius.

The National Gallery also owns the etching ‘Blind Singer’, emotionally described by Nikolay Raynov, in his ‘History of the Plastic Arts’ (1939), as ‘first’ among the ‘curious and significant’ graphic works of Goya.

The exhibition also includes a work by the Spanish surrealist artist, Salvador Dali (1904–1989), dedicated to Goya and his Caprichos.

UBA, Shipka 6, 2 A
A curatorial project by Krasimir Linkov
Every artist tries to transform their own reality into another reality - that is, into a work of art.
– Mustafa Horasan
We Came to Be Human brings together in Sofia the intersecting artistic paths of Mustafa Horasan and Husein Işık, shaped by friendship, shared memory, and the responsibility of being human. Developed between Istanbul and Vienna, this encounter brings together the works of two artists shaped by the same artistic education, the difficult historical experiences of their era, and a shared sensibility.
Following Horasan’s tragic death during the preparation of the exhibition, the project also takes on the powerful character of a tribute, keeping his memory alive. Focusing on human vulnerability, resilience, the search for goodness, and the invisible bonds we forge with others, the exhibition confronts the viewer not only with works of art, but also with the ethical and emotional depth of what it means to remain human.