In the Shadow of the Orient: Images of the Other and the Balkans in the Art of Bulgarian, Greek, Romanian, and Serbian Painters. Exhibition catalog. Sofia City Art Gallery, 14 September 2017 — 26 November 2017
Language: Bulgarian—English (bilingual)

     This еxhibition aims at presenting a visual narrative through the works of some of the most prominent artists of Bulgaria, Greece, Romania and Serbia, who worked actively in the second half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries. The research team of the exhibition was focused on the subject of the specific development of art on the Balkans in the shadow of the Orient and it offers an opportunity for encounter with authors and works that are emblematic for the art history of the four Balkan states.

     Тhe exhibition is focused on the certain notions and their reverberations through culture constitute. These are the ideas stemming from the oppositions “one’s own — foreign”, “Occident — Orient”, as well as the place of the Balkans in this global discourse. The exhibition presents works of some of the most prominent authors from Bulgaria, Greece, Romania and Serbia. Many of the presented artists received their education abroad and knowing at least intuitively the Western way of thinking of the Balkans they are able to create works of art that are on the one hand included in the tradition of the Western-European painting, but on the other — art works functioning as definitive for the borders of the one’s own in cultural aspect. In the 19th and the early 20th centuries, in the paintings of those artists who laid the foundation of the “new” secular painting in their countries, we can research the idyllic notion of the one’s own and the ordinary life, the close Otherness of the different cultures within the community and the distant Otherness of the Orient that is simultaneously characterized by civilizational violation and exotics.

В сянката на Ориента. Образите на Другия и Балканите в изкуството на художници от България, Гърция, Румъния и Сърбия

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