24 selected works by Zdravko Aleksandrov (1911 – 1998) at the Loran Gallery

A few years ago, the Loran Gallery accepted the mission to popularize the work of the painter and landscape painter Zdravko Aleksandrov (1911 – 1998). At that time, we prepared an ambitious plan for a large national retrospective exhibition and embarked on an in-depth study of the artist’s life and creative path with the idea of ​​publishing a contemporary monograph about him. In parallel with this large-scale project, we began to collect and systematize our own collection of works.

Three years passed before we were able to show over 100 works, collected from museums and galleries from all over the country, as well as from private collections, in the hall on the second floor of the Union of Bulgarian Artists at 6 Shipka Street in Sofia, in June 2024. During the retrospective, we also presented our publication “Landscape Became My Destiny” with our colleague Mariyana Avramova.

Our exhibition was short, only 23 days. Despite our efforts, we were unable to change this circumstance. Therefore, we decided that in the new salon of the Loranvgallery, which was in the process of being created, we would pay the deserved tribute to the artist, and one of our first exhibitions would be dedicated to Zdravko Alexandrov.

This moment has come. We are glad to be able to invite the audience to the new space of the “Loran” gallery in Sofia – 30 Marin Drinov Street – from February 3 to March 3, 2025, and this time we are presenting an exhibition with 24 selected works by Zdravko Alexandrov – one of the greatest Bulgarian landscape painters.

It is a chance and a great privilege to have one of the most impressive paintings from the artist's early work present in the salon - "Near Etropole", 1943. Alexandrov first presented his work at the XVIII General Art Exhibition in Sofia in 1944 and received special attention from critics. The painting was published in the newspaper "Literary Voice", Sofia, 22.03.1944, and the famous art critic Stefan Mitov (1895 – 1963) wrote about it: "Here is Zdravko Aleksandrov, the most individual and powerful representative of the young generation of our landscape painters, whom we were the first to point out to our audience. In terms of his sense of monumentality, he undoubtedly holds the first place in landscape painting in our country today. After some mischievous deviations into ordinary and alien to his plastic sensitivity picturesqueness, today he returns to himself with an even more impressive clarity and firm determination of his style in his large landscape "Near Etropole", remarkably powerfully constructed as a stylistic form, especially in the hills in the middle plan, and striking with the tectonic rhythm of the massifs, which he feels deeply and quite personally, in its cosmic elementality…."

The arrangement of the exhibition at Loran chronologically traces his creative searches and his plastic solutions in landscapes from the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s of the 20th century, tracing the entire creative path of the author. The plots are different, alternating in different periods with the favorite Rhodope Mountains for painting.

We are tempted to quote the prophetic words of one of the greatest figures in Bulgarian culture - Sirak Skitnik, about the then young artist, published in "Bulgarian Speech", May-June 1938. "With surprising maturity, Zdravko Aleksandrov gives us the Rhodope landscape - dense, intricately painted, and most importantly, including part of the soul and legend of the mountain. The works exhibited by him so far truly point to the beginning of the path of a gifted artist with an almost certain worldview and painting skill."

Visitors to the gallery will be able to learn in detail about the work of Zdravko Alexandrov by leafing through the pages of the monograph - published by the Loran gallery. The 304-page book with high printing quality is richly illustrated and includes a biography, analyses and a catalog. A large part of the documents and archival materials are published for the first time.

And finally, we will end with the living voice of the artist. Here is what Zdravko Aleksandrov said in an interview with the Bulgarian National Radio journalist Yulia Petrova in the 1980s:

“The artist must be able to converse with nature, to feel the pulse of its life. To observe and study its states and, if a plot is lucky, to give us those moments in which it manifests itself most fully and most typically.”

Parts of the interview will be published on the gallery’s website during the exhibition.

The 24 selected works can be seen at 30 Marin Drinov Street in Sofia from February 3 to March 3, 2025.

No official opening is planned.