May 10 – June 10, 2010
the 6 Shipka Str. gallery of the UBA

Slavka Denevʼs (1929 – 1984) retrospective exhibition on her 80th anniversary, presented more than 160 of the works the artist bequeathed to the UBA and also paintings property of galleries and museums across the country, and of private collections. The exhibition was accompanied by a bilingual catalog, which featured writings by art critics and close friends. Curator: Vessela Christova-Radoeva. 

This exhibition and the accompanying catalog present the work of one of the most prominent contemporary Bulgarian artist: Slavka Denev. Even her first paintings, shown at general art exhibitions in 1957, 1959 and 1962, demonstrate categorically her individuality and have not been left unnoticed by art critics and museum experts. She never attempted to produce an individual show. As late as the 1990ʼs, her works were presented within two large expositions at the UBA and the Sofia City Gallery. She used to say that she was a naturalist who applied colors and never used the words “art” and “painting” referring to her own paintingd. She often worked on several pictures in parallel, because their subject-matter seemed equally intriguing to her at the moment. She never signed or dated her paintings, never gave them titles. This artist never locked her art up in any sort of automatism or notional images. To her, experimenting was, in a broad sense, creative motivation and not art for artʼs sake; it continued logically and enriched the road already traveled. The portraits she painted were always set in a specific environment of objects, as expressive as the human image itself; her still lifes were parts of characteristic interiors rather than groupings of objects of differing material quality, and her compositions always betrayed an invisible, yet powerful human presence.

A selection of the works was exhibited in galleries in Russe, Pleven, Varna, Sozopol – the Apolonia art event, and the Vidima gallery, in Sevlievo, in 2000/2011.

This project was implemented by the financial support of the Culture program of the Sofia Municipality, the UBA and the Sofia Press Agency.