When Bulgaria first accepted the invitation to participate in the Venice Biennale, it was still a young state, having been liberated from the Ottoman Empire only thirty years earlier. The country’s official institutions were still in their infancy, lacking infrastructure and the conditions necessary for a flourishing cultural life. Bulgarian artists had mostly been educated abroad and carried with them various foreign influences, yet the state decided to step onto the international art scene and present what was considered “typically Bulgarian.”
In the first Bulgarian pavilion in Venice, the participating artists exhibited works that had shortly before been shown in the halls of the School of Arts and Crafts (as the National Academy of Arts in Sofia was then called) as part of the summer exhibition of the Society of Artists—one of only two artists’ associations existing at the time. The selection was conservative and consisted mainly of realist genre paintings depicting the everyday life of Bulgarians. As the Italian ambassador to Bulgaria, Fausto Cucchi Boasso, wrote in a letter:
“I believe the Bulgarian hall will be of interest because, as I understand it, the artists are fully aware that the exhibited works should primarily present national subjects.”[1]
At that time, the Venice Biennale itself was still a very young forum. Its first edition took place in 1895, literally only three years after the first Bulgarian exhibition in Plovdiv, which marked the beginning of the country’s official state art collection.
From its founding, participation in the Biennale was based on invitations extended to individual states, a structure that would largely predetermine the political dynamics and crises in the history of this 130-year-old forum. Biennale committees selected works sent by different countries and arranged them within a shared exhibition space. National pavilions began to be erected in the Giardini in 1907, though one could say that the national identity of artists and the national character of participation became especially important and contentious around the time of the First World War. Wars and geopolitical upheavals strongly influenced the atmosphere of what was, in principle, a cultural event.
Its beginnings, however, were still innocent and marked by a spirit of pluralism. The first editions of the international exhibition were organized in the fashion of international salons, with artworks displayed within carefully decorated environments complete with furniture and flowers. Judging from the correspondence surrounding the organization of the first Bulgarian pavilion, Bulgarian artists were aware of these expectations and took them seriously in arranging a “typically Bulgarian decoration,” including carpets from the state factory in Panagyurishte and “typically Bulgarian ceramic objects displayed in a showcase, itself also typically Bulgarian,” produced by the School of Arts and Crafts.[2]
The emphasis on the “typically Bulgarian,” even when shaped by Secession and other artistic movements current at the time, is particularly striking. In Bulgaria’s international presentations during this early period, the creation of a “typical” environment usually involved numerous elements such as Old Bulgarian interlace ornaments and decorative motifs, wheat sheaves, tobacco leaves, silkworms, roses, fountains with rose water, curtains, embroidered textiles, braided wool trimmings, peasant women in folk costume, and paintings by Mrkvička.[3] In the case of the Venice Biennale, however, the emphasis falls on the art itself. The additional elements are reduced to a minimum.
Subsequently, in Bulgaria’s history with this major international forum, what would become “typically Bulgarian” was rather the long absence, the major scandals and criticism within the local milieu accompanying each episodic appearance in Venice, as well as the syndrome of the pioneer-discoverer: in Venice, the Bulgarian artist is always like Marco Polo, discovering unknown worlds.
“Our artists have also been invited to participate in the exhibition that will open next April in Venice. Both associations — the Contemporary Art Society and the Society of Bulgarian Artists — have already confirmed their participation in the exhibition. Through this invitation, the Administration of the Exhibition bestows a great honour upon our art, and we are pleased that the artists understood this and agreed to send their works.”[4]
Immediately after this first pavilion came the first major interruption in Bulgaria’s national participation in Venice. During the dynamic and eventful decades of the 1920s and 1930s — a period filled with artists, exhibitions, and intense artistic activity — Bulgaria did not participate in the Biennale. The archives preserve only fragmentary traces and exchanges of correspondence from these years of absence. In 1920, Venice received only a single telegram containing a negative reply from the Bulgarian Legation in Rome.[5] The next trace does not appear until 1940, when the Biennale Secretariat sent a letter to the Bulgarian sculptor Kiril Todorov politely declining his request for an individual participation as a representative of Bulgaria.[6]
Bulgaria’s second participation in the Biennale took place during the Second World War. In 1942, according to the commissioner at the time, Boris Denev, the country had submitted its participation too late. He wrote:
“Bulgaria is participating in the Biennale for the first time and therefore, in my opinion, the inclusion of a larger number of artists in the exhibition, even at the expense of overall coherence, may provide a better idea of the current state of our art. The absence of individual exhibitions will be compensated for by a greater number — five to six — of paintings by several artists.”[7]
As already mentioned, the Venice Biennale is not only a cultural phenomenon but also a political platform. The shifting placement of countries within the pavilions, the visibility they are granted, interruptions in participation, and exchanges between artists all reflect, in a remarkably direct way, the current state of international relations.
“The Biennale reflects changes in the cultural climate like litmus paper,” writes Philip Rylands, the longtime director of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice.[8]
In 1942, Bulgaria was part of the Tripartite Pact during the Second World War and was housed — however troublingly symbolic this may sound — in the Polish Pavilion in the Giardini. This participation remains in history as the largest and most extensive Bulgarian presentation at the Biennale.
The fragmentation of artistic societies, influences, and tendencies, as well as the growing richness and vitality of artistic life in the country, can be traced in the eclectic and expansive selection assembled for this pavilion. All genres were represented, together with the unifying thread of the “typically Bulgarian,” manifested in the choice of subjects and motifs. In its own distinctive way, the exhibition reflected the contrasts of Bulgarian social life in the early 1940s: on the one hand, rural subjects and ethnographic detail; on the other, urban life and official portraiture.
Interestingly, at its subsequent participation in the first postwar Biennale in 1948 — when the achievements of Cubism and Western European modernisms were being rehabilitated within the forum — Bulgaria appeared with a list of artists remarkably similar to the one from the previous edition. By that time, the Stalinist period had already begun in the country and the doctrine of Socialist Realism had been officially established, yet the overall artistic landscape, at least in the first years, remained relatively unchanged from the early 1940s, something clearly visible in the pavilion itself.
An understandable interruption of more than a decade followed (the most dogmatic period of Stalinism) before Bulgaria appeared in Venice once again in 1964. This participation seems almost to have been organized in order to reinforce the conviction among the official bodies directing artistic life in the socialist state that we had no place at such a forum.
Shortly before that, in 1961, a new chapter in the history of Bulgarian art had begun under the directive for the restoration of diversity proclaimed by the April Plenum of the Bulgarian Communist Party in 1956. For the Bulgarian artist, however, this “diversity” was not connected to contemporary tendencies in the international art world, but rather represented yet another return to the past and to artistic pursuits abandoned a decade earlier. This is why Bulgaria’s pavilions at the Venice Biennale in 1948 and 1964 appear to stand in a continuous line of succession with the pavilion from 1942. The only difference is the emergence of a new generation of artists.
At the beginning of the 1960s, the stars of Svetlin Rusev, Velichko Minekov, and Aleksandar Dyakov began to rise. Almost immediately after their debut, they were embraced both by the leadership structures of the Union of Bulgarian Artists and by museum collections, while also becoming the face of Bulgaria at this major international forum. The juxtaposition and continuity between generations seem to have been central to this selection. The younger artists were presented alongside their teachers — Dechko Uzunov, Stoyan Venev, Nayden Petkov, Marko Markov, and Vasil Radoslavov.
Following Bulgaria’s participation in Venice at a moment when the Biennale had been overtaken by American Pop Art and Abstract Expressionism, the Bulgarian commissioner Atanas Stoykov remarked, in the only article published in the local press about this participation, that the Bulgarian presentation had been “one of the few islands of serious and joyful art.”[9]
Of course, criticism during that period was just as unstable and susceptible to influence as the political conditions in the country themselves. Shortly before departing for Venice with the young artists, Atanas Stoykov criticized them during the 1962 General Art Exhibition, arguing that, within the local context, they were still not sufficiently convincing in achieving the “new” in Socialist Realism.“[10]
During the 1960s, the Biennale underwent a crisis that led to structural changes which remain in place to this day. The exhibition model was divided into two parts. One consisted of a large thematic exhibition entrusted to a different curator each edition. The other was made up of the exhibitions in the national pavilions. There was no connection between the two, nor any requirement for thematic synchronization.
For Bulgarian artists, however, this structure and principle would remain a mystery for a long time, because after the 1964 presentation Bulgaria’s participation in the Biennale entered its longest interruption. The country became far more closed off than even during the Stalinist period. Throughout this prolonged absence, during the 1970s and 1980s, the state commissioned art on a massive scale, while museum and gallery collections expanded at their most intensive pace. This was the period in which the true contemporary image of Bulgarian art was formed, yet this took place without any real comparison to developments beyond the country’s borders — or at least without the Venice Biennale.
The political changes at the end of the 1980s restored Bulgarian artists’ sense of confidence and self-assurance that they could once again join the rest of the world. In relation to the Venice Biennale, however, such breakthroughs were not easily achieved and occurred primarily thanks to the individual efforts of particular artists.
The individual participations of Bulgarian artists in the Biennale constitute a separate chapter, independent of the turns in official state policy or the momentary condition of the local art scene. They are the result of the personal achievements and accumulated careers of individual artists who were most often either permanently based abroad or had a particularly strong international presence.
Nikolay Diulgheroff, who spent virtually his entire conscious life in Italy, participated eight times in the Biennale’s international exhibition. Yet this participation took place within a context in which the Bulgarian artist was considered part of the Italian group Secondo Futurismo.[11]
According to the Biennale archives, Nikolay Diulgheroff participated in the editions of 1928, 1930, 1932, 1934, 1936, 1976, 1978, and 1995.
“Acqua alta. The History of the National Participation of Bulgaria in the Venice Biennale 1910–2024" exhibition view, KAPANA Gallery
Curated by Svetlana Kuyumdzhieva and Plamen Petrov., 2025.
Installation
Details
- Photographer: Vanessa Popova
- Description: Оrganized by the City Art Gallery - Plovdiv and the Municipality of Plovdiv.
Andrey Nikolov, who spent most of his life in Rome, was the first to establish connections between Bulgarian institutions, Bulgarian artists, and the Biennale as early as 1909.[12] He subsequently took part in Bulgaria’s first two national pavilions, in 1910 and 1942. Andrey Nikolov and Boris Georgiev had the largest number of works represented in the second Bulgarian pavilion in 1942. “The Bulgarian artist Boris Georgiev from Milan” was even listed as an assistant to the commissioner of Bulgaria’s participation at the time, Boris Denev.[13]
Prior to this, Boris Georgiev had also participated individually in the international exhibition in 1926 with two works documented in the Biennale catalogue.
Following the case of Kiril Todorov in 1940, Marie-Therese Gospodinova also attempted to obtain an invitation as a representative of Bulgaria. In 1968, the Bulgarian ambassador in Rome advocated on her behalf, but the Biennale once again politely declined.[14]
Traces of the participation of other artists of Bulgarian origin also appear in the Biennale archives, such as the Israeli painter Avram Ofek (born in Bulgaria and educated in Italy), who represented Israel in 1972, as well as Ergin Çavuşoğlu (born in Bulgaria and educated in Turkey), who represented Turkey in 2003. Haralampi G. Oroschakoff participated in the “Aperto” section (from the Italian “aperto”, meaning “open”) in 1988. Organized between 1980 and 1997, the section provided a platform for young and emerging artists. Nedko Solakov also participated in “Aperto” in 1993.
His experience and contacts within the Biennale made the national participation of 1999 possible to a great extent, once again realized under extraordinary conditions and deadlines. Nedko Solakov participated individually in the Biennale’s curated exhibitions in 2001, 2003, and again in 2007 in Robert Storr’s project, where he won the Special Jury Prize with his installation Discussion (Property).
There is something common to all of these seemingly heterogeneous artists: they were formed primarily within foreign environments or carried tendencies and influences that were not characteristic of their native artistic scene at the respective historical moment. More often than not, they stood apart, distinguished from prevailing local tendencies.
The same applies to most of the artists who, over the years, have represented Bulgaria in the official national pavilions. They possess either modest or substantial experience on the international scene, have been educated abroad, or live there. Somehow, spontaneously and almost intuitively, the lot for our inclusion in this competition always seems to fall to artists who already have their own place in the world. They appear to construct the export image of Bulgarian art — one that is understandable and legible within a foreign context. As the number of participations increases, the “typically Bulgarian” gradually gives way to this striving for relevance within the broader international picture.
Interest in the Venice Biennale in Bulgaria revived once again during a fragile period in terms of political and social conditions — the beginning of the 1990s. This was also the moment when the Venice Biennale further expanded its territory, incorporating the historic buildings of the Arsenale and an increasing number of spaces throughout the city. The first international curators began to be invited for the central exhibition.
In 1993, the Biennale regulations allowed countries without national pavilions to present themselves in the Central Pavilion following approval by a Biennale committee. The Bulgarian artist Stana Milanova, who at the time was living in Milan, was invited to participate in Achille Bonito Oliva’s curated exhibition at the 45th Venice Biennale. For her, this was an important opportunity for Bulgaria to appear on the map of the prestigious forum with a national participation, which the artist herself considered to be the first:
“…up until that moment there had never even been any discussion of a Bulgarian national participation, since such a thing had never existed at the Biennale.”[15]
Her initiative to establish contact with the official institutions in Bulgaria became the subject of polemics in the specialized press. The reaction was predominantly negative. She found no support within the professional community and encountered the slow pace of the institutions, which, according to her own account, led her to abandon her initial idea of involving other artists in such a presentation. She realized her participation with the installation Miracle, which once again referred to the “typically Bulgarian” through the inclusion of the Bulgarian tricolour in some of its details.
The discussion sparked by Stana Milanova’s unexpected national participation continued over the following years through letters and conversations between artists and curators on the one hand and representatives of the official authorities on the other.
In 1999, the Ministry of Culture organized a competition for Bulgaria’s participation in the Venice Biennale. The process concluded with the decision to entrust the official participation to Nedko Solakov and Iara Boubnova with the project Announcement. While this procedure was still underway in Bulgaria, however, the Biennale sent a fax informing the Bulgarian authorities that they had fallen behind schedule and missed the deadlines. As a result, the realization of the Bulgarian participation was placed in jeopardy. To a great extent, it was only Nedko Solakov’s persistence that succeeded in preserving the official status of the project Announcement, which was ultimately included both in the Biennale catalogue and in its archives as an official national participation.
The project consisted of a text in Bulgarian, English, and Italian, printed against the background of the Bulgarian tricolour on postcards and T-shirts, declaring Bulgaria’s readiness to participate in the following Biennale in 2001. Solakov’s work was distributed by hand among visitors at several key locations throughout the Biennale grounds during the opening days and attracted considerable attention.
Eight years later, the next important shift in Bulgaria’s official cultural policy brought the country back to Venice once again. In 2007, on the occasion of Bulgaria’s accession to the European Union, UNESCO provided, free of charge, the courtyard spaces and part of the ground floor of its Venetian headquarters — Palazzo Zorzi — for the organization of a Bulgarian national participation. This opportunity emerged at a late stage, and the Ministry of Culture entrusted the organization to the National Gallery. The gallery’s director at the time and commissioner of the participation, Boris Danailov, invited Vessela Nozharova as curator. Thus began the realization of the project A Place You Have Never Been Before, once again in the spirit of rediscovering both oneself and Venice.
Ivan Moudov, Pravdoliub Ivanov, and Stefan Nikolaev
A Place You Have Never Been Before, 2007.
Installation
Details
- Photographer: Kalin Serapionov
- Description: The Bulgarian Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale
Curated by Vessela Nozharova
The artists Ivan Moudov, Pravdoliub Ivanov, and Stefan Nikolaev presented new works created specifically for the occasion as independent artistic statements, without seeking explicit connections between them. The Bulgarian pavilion was realized with minimal state funding. The principal sponsorship for the production of the artworks, as well as for the organization as a whole, came from the renowned Belgian patron and collector Hugo Voeten.
Ivan Moudov produced a special edition of Bulgarian Wine for Openings and distributed it across all the national pavilions, thereby marking Bulgaria’s return to the forum once again. Moudov also participated with objects from the series Fragments, which ironically summarized the condition of contemporary art in Bulgaria, the absence of a museum of contemporary art, and the lack of institutional cultural policy.
Pravdoliub Ivanov
Memory is a Muscle, 2007.
Sculpture
Details
- Material: resin, silicone, polycarbonat
- Description: Courtesy of Pravdoliub Ivanov
In the following year, 2008, Bulgaria participated for the first time in the Venice Architecture Biennale. Yet despite this momentum, driven more by external factors than by internal cultural policy, these appearances failed to produce a lasting impact on the country’s cultural direction. Bulgaria’s participation in the Biennale once again came to a halt. The road to Venice seems always to have remained strangely unrecognized at the level of the official institutions on which it depended.
In 2011, however, the process reversed, and news of Bulgaria’s official participation in the Biennale became public only after it had already been announced on the forum’s website and in its catalogue. The Ministry of Culture delegated the participation to one of the newly established private galleries in Sofia. The principal concept behind the selection was to present sixty years of the development of Bulgarian art through the works of three artists from three different generations — Pavel Koychev, Greddy Assa, and Houben Tcherkelov.
“Acqua alta. The History of the National Participation of Bulgaria in the Venice Biennale 1910–2024" exhibition view, KAPANA Gallery
Curated by Svetlana Kuyumdzhieva and Plamen Petrov., 2025.
Installation
Details
- Photographer: Vanessa Popova
- Description: Оrganized by the City Art Gallery - Plovdiv and the Municipality of Plovdiv.
Pavel Koychev participated with the monumental sculpture The Violet Buffalo, as well as with models for futuristic eco-houses. Houben Tcherkelov presented works from his long-running painting series recreating scenes and details from banknotes of different currencies. Greddy Assa participated with painted landscapes and compositions.
The pavilion provoked a scandal that extended beyond the qualities of the artists and their works themselves. A significant number of representatives from the cultural community reacted to the unexpected announcement with an open letter addressed to the Minister of Culture. Their protest was directed primarily against the lack of a transparent procedure for selecting the participants. Given Bulgaria’s sporadic appearances in Venice, the delegation of an official participation once again through such an unregulated process provoked widespread public reaction. In response to this case, the Ministry of Culture organized a working group the following year to draft official regulations for an open competition procedure.
Several more years of absence followed.
Bulgaria’s participation in the Venice Biennale in 2019 became the first in a series of Bulgarian pavilions organized through an official open competition. The concept of the project How We Live (curator: Vera Mlechevska) centered on presenting everyday life as both material and subject. The idea was developed as a visual dialogue between the artists Lazar Lyutakov and Rada Boukova. Every detail of their joint installation was conceived in relation to the pavilion space itself and even to the colour of the Venetian lagoon, making it impossible for the work to be recreated in exactly the same way in another environment.
Rada Boukova and Lazar Lyutakov
How We Live, 2019.
Installation
Details
- Photographer: Paolo Codeluppi
- Description: The Bulgarian Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale
Curated by Vera Mlechevska
Rada Boukova worked with polystyrene panels in a specially selected shade, thereby simultaneously evoking the effect of a painterly image and completely transforming the structure of the space and its perception. Lazar Lyutakov contributed the Bia Hoi glasses, handmade in Vietnam from recycled glass but based on the standardized modern “faceted tumbler” design.
Despite the clear and transparent selection procedure, the pavilion once again became the subject of scandal and division — on the one hand between the former and the current Minister of Culture, and on the other between the selected participants and the applicants who had not been chosen in the competition. The subtle and deeply philosophical work of the two artists was transformed into spectacle within the local context. Extreme reactions in the media and public sphere amplified speculations concerning the price and form of Lazar Lyutakov’s glasses or the material used for Rada Boukova’s panels, rather than addressing the concept of the works themselves or the significance of Bulgaria’s participation in this forum.
The following 59th Venice Biennale was postponed by one year due to the global COVID-19 pandemic and ultimately took place in 2022. The competition for Bulgaria’s participation had been announced at the end of the previous year.
Michail Michailov
There You Are, 2022.
Installation
Details
- Photographer: Lisa Rastl
- Description: The Bulgarian Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale
Curated by Irina Batkova
The Vienna-based Bulgarian artist Michail Michailov and curator Irina Batkova won the competition with a project presenting the 2014 drawing series Dust to Dust. The artist draws the dust from his studio, transforming it into an image and a symbol of passing time, as well as of the value and transience of all material things.
For the pavilion space, Michail Michailov created an immersive environment combining objects and drawings with the existing furniture, corners, and architectural irregularities of the site. The overall impression of simultaneous presence and absence demanded concentration and active participation from the viewer. The drawings appeared as objects displayed on low plinths. Alongside them, the overall composition also included a video performance from the series Just Keep on Going, as well as the installation Headspacing placed in the window of Spazio Ravà, through which the visitor could exist simultaneously inside and outside the pavilion space, suspended in an intermediate state between participation and observation. Once again, the pavilion was organized under exceptionally tight deadlines, with the intention of presenting a different, more minimalist, and less spectacular concept of national participation.
In the following edition of the Biennale, however, this strategy gave way to the selection of the first overtly political Bulgarian pavilion. The project The Neighbours by Krasimira Butseva, Julian Chehirian, and Lilia Topouzova (curator: Vasil Vladimirov) engaged with the traumas of the socialist past. Exactly thirty-five years after the beginning of the political transition, the project opened up a subject in which few artists have dared to engage publicly.
Krasimira Butseva, Julian Chehirian, and Lilia Topouzova
The Neighbours, 2024.
Installation
Details
- Photographer: Pierfrancesco Celada
- Description: The Bulgarian Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale
Curated by Vasil Vladimirov
The collective behind the project brought together a visual artist, a doctoral researcher in the history of science, and a writer. Generational distance, as well as geographical distance — all three live abroad — proved conducive to successfully translating their long-term research into visual form.
The large themes of memory and history were approached through the small personal stories of survivors of socialist-era prison camps and political repression. Structured as fragments of an old socialist interior composed of three rooms — a living room, a bedroom, and a kitchen — the installation confronted, both literally and metaphorically, trauma and nostalgia for that past, placing them in an irreconcilable conflict.
Bulgaria’s participation in 2024 provoked numerous reactions in the international press, and the Bulgarian pavilion became one of the most visited locations of the Biennale. Thus, with regular open competitions now established and with a determined effort to meet international standards, the history of the Bulgarian pavilion arrives at the project The Federation of Minor Practices (curator: Martina Yordanova), which represents Bulgaria at the 2026 Venice Biennale through the work of four Bulgarian women artists and four critical perspectives on contemporary reality.
The artists Rayna Teneva, Veneta Androva, Gery Georgieva, and Maria Nalbantova live predominantly abroad, which gives them a particular perspective on identity, while the “typically Bulgarian” in the present day acquires an increasingly transnational character. While researching the “Bulgarian trace” in the archives of the Venice Biennale and preparing the large retrospective exhibition that followed in Plovdiv — Acqua Alta: A History of Bulgarian National Participations at the Venice Biennale 1910–2024 — I first had to systematize for myself facts, documents, and names in order to place them within a broader context, and only afterwards to recount this story many times before different audiences and in different ways. With each retelling, new details, events, or contextual factors emerged that had previously escaped my attention. Gradually, through this process, I came to understand the full complexity of these national participations.
This is not simply a history, but a profound cross-section containing a substantial degree of politics, while also offering insight into the mentality, collective psychology, strengths, absences, and complexes of the Bulgarian art scene. I realize that these complicated turns and dramatic relationships reflect not merely state policy or particular artistic tendencies of their time, but also the irrepressible need to assert oneself and to exist within the larger world despite everything.
In this sense, a forum such as the Venice Biennale, with its endlessly controversial and increasingly explosive national presentations, is more than a litmus test: it is a profoundly serious examination of the civilizational level of a state and of its artistic scene.
Svetlana Kuyumdzhieva, 2026
This publication is made possible with the support of the Singer-Zahriev Foundation.
[1] Historical Archive of the Venice Biennale – ASAC. Historical Fund, Black Boxes, Pavilions, file 19, 1910 Exhibition, Bulgaria, letter, 14 December 1909.
[3] Milena Georgieva, “Haralampi Tachev and the International Exhibitions Abroad: A Reconstruction of a Creative Pilgrimage,” Problemi na izkustvoto [Problems of Art], no. 2, 1999, pp. 32–42.
[4] Hudozhestvena kultura [Artistic Culture], no. 2, February 1910, p. 32.
[5] ASAC – Historical Archive of Contemporary Arts, La Biennale di Venezia. Historical Fund, file 5, Bulgaria, XXV, telegram from the Bulgarian Legation in Rome.
[6] ASAC – Historical Archive of Contemporary Arts, La Biennale di Venezia. Historical Fund, file 5, Bulgaria, 1940, letter to Kiril Todorov, 18 April 1940.
[7] Ibid., letter from Denev to Maraini, 1 April 1942.
[8] Philip Rylands, Politics & The Venice Biennale, The New Criterion, 20 November 2024.
[9] Atanas Stoykov, “A View of the 32nd Venice Biennale,” Izkustvo [Art], nos. 9–10, 1964, p. 72.
[10] Atanas Stoykov, “The Main Thing Is the Approach,” Narodna kultura [People’s Culture], no. 50, 15 December 1962.
[11] Tatyana Dimitrova, Ivan Nenov, Sofia: Bulgarian Artist, 1998, p. 65.
[12] ASAC – Historical Archive of Contemporary Arts, La Biennale di Venezia. Historical Fund, Black Boxes, Pavilions, file 21, Bulgaria.
[14] ASAC – Historical Archive of Contemporary Arts, La Biennale di Venezia. Visual Arts Fund, file 152, Bulgaria, letter from Favaretto Fisca to Teolov.
[13] ASAC – Historical Archive of Contemporary Arts, La Biennale di Venezia. Historical Fund, file 5, Bulgaria, 1942, letter to Denev, 15 May 1942.
[15] Milanova, Stana. “Izlagame se…”, Kultura, no. 14, 2 April 1993, p. 6.