POINTS OF INTERSECTION
Portraits of Artists by Other Artists

29 June 2010 - 26 September 2010
Exhibition opening: June 29, Tuesday, 6pm

The exhibition features portraits created between the late 19th century and the early 21 century by various generations of artists. The broad time span allows the viewer to follow the transformations in the mutual perceptions of artists.

The exhibition reveals the popularity of the genre of portrait painting, the quality of artistic output, as well as the interest demonstrated in artists and critics as models. It may be viewed as part of a succession of exhibitions that started with the "Self-portrait. Visible Image and Hidden Meaning" exhibition hosted by the Sofia City Art Gallery in 2006. While the "Self-portrait" explores the artist's view of himself/herself, the current exhibition reveals the life of an artistic community as depicted by insiders through the modifications in the meaning of the artist-to-artist and artist-to-critic relationships.

Traditionally, Bulgarian portrait painting is characterized by emphasis on form, relatively sustainable compositional patterns and formal setting. Portraits featured in the exhibition can be grouped into several categories, reflecting the trends in an artistic dialogue. Those are portraits documenting a personal relationship (an intimate relationship, relationship between spouses), portraits documenting the parent-child relationship within the context of continuity between generations, portraits presenting informal artistic circles and friendly societies, and portraits documenting an actual event in the life of the artistic community or revealing institutionalized communication. Portrait painting as a type of communication can be found in the so called "pair portraits", where artists belonging to the same or different generations have portrayed each other.

Portrait painting is a type of communication. When there is such interaction going on between an artist and a critic things become multifaceted and complicated. The role of the critic has changed through the years. The portrayal of the images of prominent art and literary critics belonging to different periods in the history of Bulgarian art reveals yet another layer of life on the Bulgarian art scene.

The exhibition features canvases created in the period between 1898 and 2010, part of them being brought to the attention of the public and researchers for the first time. The CD-ROM available at the exhibition features 165 artworks by 98 artists.

The works featured in the exhibition belong to the Sofia City Art Gallery, the National Art Gallery, "Svetlin Rousev" Atelier Collection, National Academy of Arts, Art Gallery - Varna, Art Gallery - Vidin, Art Gallery - Dimitrovgrad, Art Gallery - Pazardzhik, Art Gallery - Pleven, Art Gallery - Plovdiv, Art Gallery - Kazanluk, Art Gallery - Kyustendil, Art Gallery - Sliven, Art Gallery - Stara Zagora, Art Gallery - Strazhitsa, Art Gallery - Turgoviste, Art Gallery - Razgrad, Art Gallery - Rouse, Art Gallery - Shoumen, "Old Plovdiv" Municipal Institute, the Union of Bulgarian Artists and private collections.

Sofia City Gallery 

History of the Gallery

The National Museum of Bulgarian Art is the largest and most respectable institution of its kind in Bulgaria. Over the years, it has established its position as a center for national cultural heritage and values. The collection was started in 1892 when the People's Museum of Archeology founded its Department of Art. By virtue of an express resolution of the Council of Ministers in 1948 NMBA (National Art Gallery) was pronounced an independent entity.

The museum's collection of New and Contemporary Bulgarian art from the period since Bulgaria's Liberation in 1878 up to the 1990s consists of more than 30 000 individual pieces of paintings, prints and sculptures. The collection of paintings by Bulgarian masters is the most comprehensive. The collection of black and white drawings is also very rich. The museum's expositions feature some of the best achievements of Bulgarian sculptors of the 20th century. 

 Expositions are regularly organized in the halls of the museum. There are about ten of them held here each year. They are usually dedicated to prominent Bulgarian artist or major issues in the New and Contemporary Bulgarian Art. Mixed expositions by various artists organized on regular basis illustrate the diversity of the artistic process from the first days of independence till the present. 

We used the information from the official website of

National Art Gallery 

ZENG FANZHI
12 June -17August 2010

Born in Wuhan, Hubei province in 1964, Zeng Fanzhi decided at a very early age to become a painter. He set the bar for himself extremely high, endeavoring to become an artist whose work would one day transcend conventions, borders, fashion and time.

In 1991, Zeng graduated from Hubei Academy of Fine Arts. At that time, the ideological changes in China and the style of German Expressionism deeply influenced him. His early paintings are immediately recognizable by their signature expressionistic strokes, that lend provocative sensations of underlying violence and agony to his lavishly rendered canvases.

Upon moving to Beijing, he began his celebrated Mask series in 1994. In Mask No 13, a man is wearing a white grinning mask and caressing a Dalmatian with his enormous and chiseled hands. The intimacy between the man and the dog suggests the artist's optimistic view towards the world around him; yet, there is an element of the sinister lurking behind the mask on the man's face. By using sharp brush strokes, Zeng magnifies psychological tensions between the stylized theatrical mask and the subdued human body.

Anxiety and psychological gravity are also revealed in his portraits, including a self-portrait from 2009, in which the artist, in a long red robe, is sitting on a stool in front of a massive solemn landscape of mountains. He stares intensely out of the painting. His thoroughly apathetic grimace suggests an attempt to create a work that is a raw expression of his psychological condition. The subjects of his portraits are depicted with a set of ridiculously large and bold eyes looking out of the painting, as if to confront the viewer, capturing their inner personalities, with the unflinching honesty that characterizes his work.

Zeng's landscape paintings mark his departure from his critically renowned Expressionistic style. Rendering thick woods, sometimes including people or animals, Zeng brings his landscape to life with a frenzied network of brush strokes, replicating the inarticulate calligraphy of muffled sentiment and the galvanization of repressed anxiety. Painting with two or more brushes simultaneously, Zeng uses one to describe his subject, while others meander the canvas, leaving traces of his subconscious through processes. This action of construction and deconstruction transforms the pictures into near abstraction.

Since 2009, Zeng has started his meditation with meticulously painting very simple solitary still lifes: a pair of shoes, a fish or a piece of lamb, as an effort to reinterpret the history of art in a contemporary manner. With Trough these seemingly mundane subjects, Zeng demonstrates his vigorous painting ability and his desire to shift from expressing daunting human psychics to reconciling his inner self with nature and his surroundings. The paintings no longer reflect conflicts and restlessness in the world; instead they are parts of an introspective odyssey in searching for truth within that goes beyond rational understanding.

National Gallery for Aoreign Art