Exhibitions

Kvadrat 500 Atrium Entrance at 95, Vasil Levski Blvd.
Curator: Martin Kostashki
The fifth edition of the National Gallery project, ‘The Wall’, presents ‘Reflections’, a site-specific installation by artist Filipina Stamenkova.
The mirror is a unique object, and an aspect of a deeply personal experience within the space where we find ourselves. What we see changes as we move—much like the sequence of frames in a film, an experience based on the principle of anamorphosis.
The artist explains: ‘When visitors reach this wall, they see themselves reflected in the mirror and thus occupy a central place in the installation. In the context of architecture and exteriors, mirrors retain the magical ability to bend, distort, expand and transform images and, through them, our perception of those images and our relationship with the living space. A sometimes pleasant, sometimes surprising or even comforting, often strange and confusing experience, the act of capturing oneself in a reflective surface is so fundamental to our continued assessment. The mirrored surface is strangely passive, yet intrusive and energetic, not only because it reflects the environment and the people around but, because of the very nature of its reflective quality, it transforms the way we see the world that surrounds us.’
When viewers see themselves reflected in a work, art immediately inspires a pronounced interest and creates a magical fascination similar to that in the myth of Narcissus.
The scale of the mirrored sculptural installation expands the visual space of the Kvadrat 500 Atrium, adding another aspect to its entry into the inner life of the gallery—by changing it and creating a new space.
The installation was designed and built by Woood Makerspace, a shared workplace for people with ideas who are skilful with their hands, with tools, and who have an aptitude for engineering. A place for bold projects, design developments and creative workshops in ceramics and woodcarving, the atelier is well known for its production in Georgia, Morocco, South Africa, as well as throughout Europe. To this day, a condition for accepting a commission is that it be complex and require brainstorming and creativity. The Woood brand is also popular for its work with the fashion giant Louis Vuitton, for which it has produced various façade and interior installations for the brand’s boutiques in London, Paris, Tokyo, and other cities. In Bulgaria, Woood is widely known for a number of projects relating to urban causes: the Imp-Act Agency’s Christmas decoration, the hidden letters of the Reading Sofia Foundation, as well as for initiatives developing the capital’s tourist image of the, in partnership with Sofia Airport and soSofia.com, the independent platform for city symbols.
The project was made possible with the financial support of the Lachezar Tsotsorkov Foundation.
Media partner: BTA / Bulgarian News Agency.

Kvadrat 500, 4th floor
Alexander Denkov (1925–1972) was an artist with a short lifespan, but an extremely rich, meaningful, and prolific oeuvre. He was most productive in the genres of illustration and book design, although his unabating energy also flowed into cinema and the theatre: he was the scenographer for the theatrical performances ‘The Iron Oil Lamp’ and ‘The Bells of Prespa’; and the production designer of films including ‘The Law of the Sea’, ‘The Sun and the Shadow’, ‘Stars’, and ‘The Five from Moby Dick’. His contribution to the development of science fiction illustration remains significant, while his curiosity for hidden natural beauties and his extreme nature made him one of the pioneers of diving and cave exploration in Bulgaria.
In 1969, Denkov produced his remarkable illustrations for Homer’s epic poem, ‘The Iliad’. Respecting the theory that this art visualised the word, enriching the author’s text, the artist transformed one of the most ancient literary works into images. The illustrations draw the reader into the atmosphere of Hellenic culture. The distinctive iconography and stylistics of the art of that time were interpreted to excellence, yet without being deprived of a personal style and individual expression. Through the contrast of the black lines with the white paper, he built perfect compositions, in which the strokes of differing intensity and density are predominant. This play between airiness and definiteness creates a feeling of dynamics of the image and density of tones and halftones. The works are part of the National Gallery’s extensive graphic stock.
Team
Curator: Dr Tanya Staneva
Restorer: Kristina Beleva
Graphic designer: Dimitrina Nenova
Translation into English: Nigrita Davis
Avgust Spasov
Iliya Shapkaroski

Kvadrat 500
Lyuben Dimitrov is not only a figure notable for his rich oeuvre in Bulgarian decoratively monumental sculpture of the 20th century, but also a kind of school for the synthesis between that sculpture and architecture.
Over 60 works produced by the artist between 1929 and 1986 are to be found in Sofia and around Bulgaria: figurative and decorative sculptural decoration of public buildings, monuments, portraits of famous intellectuals. Between 1939 and 1975, he lectured at the National Academy of Arts.
Institutions in Sofia for which the sculptor worked included the Central Cooperative Bank at 2, Ivan Vazov St. (1929); the Seventh Secondary School at 28, Tsar Ivan Shishman St. (1938); the Bulgarian National Bank (1939); the Ministry of the Interior (1939); the Ministry of Defence (1941–42); the Sts Cyril and Methodius Public Library (1942–43); and the building on the junction of Princess Maria Louisa Blvd. and Exarch Joseph Street (1961). For St Kliment Ohridski Sofia University, he designed the pair of lions at the entrance to the library (1932) and the figural cartouches on the southern (1954) and northern (1979–83) wings. During the major reconstruction of the Ivan Vazov National Theatre between 1972 and 1976, he sculpted the bifigural compositions above the four corners of the viewing tract, the figures for the niches in the side façades and two free-standing allegorical figures for the Balcony I foyer. In 1985, six allegorical figures sheltered in niches were installed on the façade of the then National Gallery of Foreign Art (today, Kvadrat 500).
Among Lyuben Dimitrov’s emblematic works is the bifigural composition titled ‘All Quiet on Shipka’, created for the interior of the ossuary on the historic peak (1957). To celebrate the centenary of the heroic events of August 1877, a decorative wall with relief compositions was completed along the steps leading up to Shipka Peak. A monument to Hadji Dimitar (1961) was also erected in the same region of the Balkan Mountains, in the Buzludzha locality. Other works around Bulgaria include ‘The Surrender of Osman Pasha’, a relief at Yasen Railway Station, near Pleven (1965); the allegorical figure on horseback at the entry point to Gabrovo (1966); the figures on the bridge over the Banska River in Kyustendil (1969); the monument to Ivaylo’s Warriors in the Demir Kapia locality near Kotel (1972); and that of Panayot Volov in the centre of Shumen (1978–84).
The exhibition also features seven easel works owned by the National Gallery, the Sofia City Art Gallery, the Kazanlak Art Gallery, and the artist’s heirs. Several of the listed monumental sculptures will be displayed as photographs.
Media Partner: BTA / Bulgarian News Agency
Vessela Christova-Radoeva, exhibition curator

Hall 24, Kvadrat 500
The gallery collection includes twenty-one graphic works by Picasso (1881–1973), thematically linked to his, and other authors’, literary texts, and with personal experiences and insights. They reveal the great artist’s passion for and virtuosity in drawing, achieved through the possibilities of lithography, etching, engraving and aquatint in a free expression of the material, of black and white areas, and strokes.
Between January 1957 and August 1959, adopting the method of automatic writing, Picasso composed the poem, ‘The Burial of the Count of Orgaz’ (El entierro del conde de Orgaz). The title refers to the eponymous painting by the Spanish artist El Greco (1541–1614). At his estate in Mougins, France, in 1966 and 1967, Picasso produced twelve copper plates for etchings to accompany the lyrics. The anthology, with an introduction by Rafael Alberti, was published in 1969 in a limited edition of 263 copies, with 220 containing the original etchings, of which the current exhibition presents seven.
The ‘Sable mouvant’ (Quicksand) Series (1965) includes ten works illustrating a poem of the same title by the poet Pierre Reverdy (1889–1960), of which the gallery possesses four. By participating in this project, Picasso expressed his tribute in memoriam to his great friend and figure in modern literature of the 20th century. The artist destroyed the plates after the print run was completed.
According to Picasso’s biographers, he received an invitation from the poet Louis Aragon to produce a poster for the upcoming World Peace Congress in Paris in April 1949. Thus was born the emblematic dove—one of the brightest symbols of the international peace movement in post-war Europe. This popular colour lithograph, created in 1952, is also exhibited.
The National Gallery is launching a series of exhibitions at Kvadrat 500, with the aim of introducing the public to the richly diverse museum depository for foreign graphics, housing works by Francisco Goya, Eugène Carrière, Auguste Rodin, Henri Fantin-Latour, Auguste Renoir, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri Matisse, Marc Chagall, and Roy Lichtenstein, among many others.

Multimedia exposition dedicated to 150 years since the death of the Apostle of Freedom, Vasil Levski.
Using holographic technology on a large-scale video wall, a re-enactment of the trial of the Apostle of Freedom is displayed, and significant moments of his life are brought back to life. Veselin Plachkov portrays Vasil Levski. Actors Ivan Trenev, Lyubov Pavlova, Rumen Ivanov, Alexander Georgiev, Biser Marinov and Nikola Dodov are also participants. Nelly Dimitrova is the screenwriter; Dimitar Gochev, the director; Simeon Parashkevov and Dimitar Gochev, cinematographers; Atanas Gendov, composer; Pirina Veselinova, Evgeni Gospodinov and the Svetoglas Quartet, musical performers; sensor studio, animation and mapping; Hristo Karagyozov, audio mixing and post-production; Ivo Milev, creative producer; and Tsvetoslav Borisov, executive producer.
The National Gallery and the Vasil Levski All-Bulgarian Committee created the exposition, with the financial support of the Ministry of Culture and donations by the Lachezar Tsotsorkov Foundation, Kaufland Bulgaria EOOD, Aurubis Bulgaria JSC, Vazovski Machinery Works JSC – Sopot, and patriotic Bulgarians.
Kvadrat 500, entrance at 95, Vasil Levski Blvd., Sofia
Opening hours:
Tuesday–Sunday, 10 a.m.– 6 p.m.
The screenings are 30 minutes away, starting at 10 am
Bookings for groups of up to 20 people: +359 879 834 025
FREE ADMISSION

Sofia Arsenal – Museum of Contemporary Art
The exhibition includes the artist’s latest works, created in recent years in his idiosyncratic style: large-format compositions of geometric, graphic elements building momentary states of time and place. Kamen Startchev is laconic in his commentary on the current temporal continuum of political cataclysms: military conflicts, looming dictatorships, and ideological clashes against the backdrop of global environmental concerns involving sweeping hurricanes, fires and earthquakes.
‘Weather Deterioration’ does not offer an apocalyptic existence of humanity today; it does not stigmatise, or condemn, but builds almost invisible states of the here and now in our everyday lives. The artist extracts those details from reality that are devoid of concreteness, functionality or heavy symbolism. Their additional purification in terms of form and colour, and their inclusion in a common compositional rhythm, deprive them of any possibility of subject matter and didactic narrative.
Media partner: BTA / Bulgarian News Agency
Nadezhda Dzhakova, PhD, exhibition curator

Alongside Nedkova’s paintings, five canvases by Angela Terzieva are arranged. At first glance incompatible in their pictorial and compositional technique, they seek a dialogical bond concentrated on the female figure and sensitivity.
Focused on a diverse perspective but a specific approach, Terzieva’s works present the body as an independent object in which the artist seeks a synthesis between movement and repose. In endeavouring to build a new pictorial reality devoid of concreteness and narrative, she expresses herself freely, without taboos, focusing on her own body, rethinking the idea of its perfection in the consumer world in which we live.

The exhibition presents for the first time in Bulgaria the art of Guerrilla Girls. The retrospective `The Art of Behaving Badly` features the group’s most significant works, including the legendary poster `Do Women Have to Be Naked to Get into the Metropolitan Museum?`—a piece that made waves in 1989 by highlighting that while less than 5% of artists in modern art museums were women, 85% of the nude figures depicted were female. The exhibition is part of BFW’s multi-year Fund for Art Projects by Women Artists.
About Guerrilla Girls
The anonymous artists’ group was founded in New York in 1985, following an action that criticized the policies of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). The group drew attention to gender and racial inequality in the artistic community and society at large. Through posters, books, billboards, lectures, interviews, public appearances, and digital interventions, the Guerrilla Girls expose inequalities, discrimination, corruption, and conflicts of interest in artistic institutions. Its members remain anonymous, wearing gorilla masks and using pseudonyms of female artists from past eras.
And More Exciting News
On 7 March, 2025—just a day after the official opening—two of the group’s founding members, known by the pseudonyms Frida Kahlo and Käthe Kollwitz, will deliver a live, performative lecture at the National Gallery / Kvadrat 500.
Visitors are encouraged to actively participate, share their thoughts, and even `behave badly` by donning the collective’s iconic gorilla masks—a playful yet powerful way to challenge the dominant norms of the art world and advocate for equal access to artistic spaces.
Media partner: BTA / Bulgarian News Agency.

The National Gallery presents its unique collection of Western European textile panels (tapestries) for the first time. The tapestries dating from the 16th to 18th centuries—the golden period of the two most significant schools, the Flemish and the French—were added to the collection in the 1960s through the Bulgarian National Bank, in the depository of the then National Gallery of Decorative and Applied Arts. The exhibition in Hall 19, Kvadrat 500 is the result of several years of iconographic and attributional research of the artworks, along with restoration and conservation procedures.
Tapestries, these handwoven panels, extremely expensive to produce, with their colourful images, were used as both decoration and wall insulation in palaces and castles. In their splendour and as trappings of power and prestige, they adorned private and public spaces and became the exclusive property of the elite. The 16th century was the golden age of Flemish art, and Brussels emerged as the leading centre for tapestry manufacture. Series of frieze-like monumental thematic compositions with scenes from the Old Testament and Christian doctrine, as well as landscapes and allegorical images, were produced. The use of sources from ancient mythology was frequent, as exemplified in the exhibition by the ‘Romans and the Sabines’ set. By the middle of the century, tapestries were to become true woven paintings.
The 17th and 18th centuries saw the rise of the French tradition. During the reigns of Henri IV and Louis XIV, and by virtue of the initiative of the Minister of Finance, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the Royal Manufactories of Tapestry of Gobelins, Aubusson and Beauvais were founded. At that time, the best representatives of all the arts and crafts were recruited to glorify the absolute monarchy and to fulfil assignments for aristocrats, taking as their models works by artists such as Rubens, Simon Vouët, Charles Lebrun, Jean-Baptiste Oudry, François Boucher and Charles-Joseph Natoire. The themes were inspired by religion, history, and mythology. One example of this is the tapestry titled ‘The Race of Atalanta and Hippomenes’, based on a tale from Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’. The fashion of the time shaped entire salon furnishings with armchairs with woven upholstery depicting anthropomorphic animals based on the moralistic fables of Jean de La Fontaine, conveying timeless lessons on human nature and society. The taste for Orientalism was also apparent in the art of weaving, as illustrated here by two of Claude-Joseph Vernet’s tapestries.
The exhibition programme includes lectures, specialist tours and workshops dedicated to the technique of making tapestries, the restoration and conservation of ancient textiles, as well as activities targeted mainly at children and young people. A mobile digitised version of the exhibition is envisaged, to be presented by the State Cultural Institute of the Minister of Foreign Affairs to Bulgarian diplomatic missions, to the Bulgarian Cultural Association in Brussels, as well as to the Museum of Textile Industry in Sliven, a branch of the National Polytechnic Museum, and to the history museums in Panagyurishte and Strelcha.
The study and preparation of the tapestries for this exhibition took more than a year in the Conservation and Restoration Laboratory of the National Gallery, through funding from the Ministry of Culture and in partnership with the French Institute in Bulgaria and the National Academy of Arts.
Curator: Yoana Tavitian