what you get here

This is not a blog which opines on current events. It rather uses incidents, books (old and new), links and papers to muse about our social endeavours.
So old posts are as good as new! And lots of useful links!

The Bucegi mountains - the range I see from the front balcony of my mountain house - are almost 120 kms from Bucharest and cannot normally be seen from the capital but some extraordinary weather conditions allowed this pic to be taken from the top of the Intercontinental Hotel in late Feb 2020

Friday, March 9, 2012

A good display in Stara Zagora

Stara Zagora was reached in exactly 3 hours – along an excellent motorway which, however, peters out at that point. It has a superb location with the Balkan mountains as a majestic backcloth. It was completely destroyed by the Turks in 1877  for welcoming the Russian army of General Gurko and was subsequently rebuilt on a strict grid-plan with leafy Boulevards.
I therefore had no problems finding the Art gallery which is a most impressive one – well maintained and offering, for 1 euro, 3 separate exhibitions.

The permament one displays some of the works of the many painters who have been born and worked there – eg  Anton Mitov, Mario Zhekov and Atanas Mihov (1879-1974) who, with Zhekov and Dobre Dobrev, is now becoming one of my real favourites. Paintings by Nikola Tanev, Ivan Penkov (below) and Moutafov were also on display.
The Gallery also offered a collection of women’s portraits and, finally, a display of woodcuts and graphics in a temperature controlled room.

A superb book The Artists of Stara Zagora was also available - produced by the Gallery Director Marin Dobrev who was kind enough to sign it for me. And I was allowed to snap many of the paintings – without flash, of course. The exhibits were so enthralling I spent almost two hours in total there – with a return visit after the lunchbreak.
Many new names – eg Vasil Marinov and a great portraitist Elizabeth Konsulova-Vazova (1881-1965)

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