Exhibitions

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

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

The Vera Nedkova House Museum
The programme, ‘In the Home of Vera Nedkova’, continues to present contemporary female artists in the cosy atmosphere of the artist’s apartment, marked by her intellectual and creative presence.
Denitsa Todorova was born in Plovdiv but has lived and worked in Antwerp for many years. Impressed by the museum in the centre of Sofia, she has prepared an exhibition titled ‘Metaphor for Memory’, an emotional return to and reflectiveness on memories and the past. The works offer a nuanced and symbolic exploration of the imaginary space where the sensitivity of women and their fragility and transformation are mirrored.
The project fills the Vera Nedkova House Museum with a fine, delicate energy that blends into the artist’s creative imagery. Her interpretive vision propounds the issue of underrepresented ‘stories’ of women in the history of art.
The focus in the artist’s oeuvre is on the hidden, intangible gestures and the ephemeral presence of subtle metaphorical scars.
Some of the abstract drawings were inspired by the museum itself and specifically created for the exhibition. They are executed on fine paper with layers of graphic powder.
Denitsa Todorova gradually removes part of it, exposing individual details in the completed work.
Media partner: BTA / Bulgarian News Agency
Diana Draganova-Stier, exhibition curator

Kvadrat 500
Opening on 19 June (Thursday), from 6:30 PM to 9:00 PM With the special participation of NASHTA.VERSIA – an audiovisual means of transport, probing the infinity of perceptions in risky impro acceleration
Having launched in 2020, the long-term project of the National Gallery ‘The Wall’ aims to present contemporary masters of mural painting and graffiti artists. On a specially designated wall in the atrium of Kvadrat 500 (with impressive dimensions of 2.40 x 27 m), the artists create monumental works in harmony with sculptural pieces by Alexander Dyakov, Pavel Koychev, Galin Malakchiev, and others, which are part of the representative museum exhibition.
Ivo Iliev Yeto is well known for a number of emblematic large-scale murals at key locations in Sofia. Through them, he creates stories in which nature, man and symbols interact in surreal situations, carrying multi-layered meaning and interpretation. With a pronounced interest in comics and graffiti since his childhood, Yeto still maintains his preference for magical subjects. His works have been realised far beyond the borders of the country – in Austria, Germany, Greece, France, etc.
In the space opposite the atrium, selection of small-format landscape compositions will also be displayed (June–August 2025), in which reality, magic and dream bring a special sense of timelessness. They are part of a larger series entitled ‘No Snooze Mornings’, in which the artist presents his searches and reflections on the fleeting moment between the end of dreaming and the moment of awakening – when human consciousness experiences a special kind of frustration at the inability to determine what is real and what is not.
Media partner: BTA / Bulgarian News Agency.
Martin Kostashki, curator of the exhibition

The Palace The National Gallery marks the centenary of the birth of Vladimir Goev (1925–2013), an illustrious representative of the generation of Bulgarian painters that won recognition in the second half of the 20th century. His name is closely linked to the history of the National Art Gallery in Sofia, where he is remembered as one of its successful directors of undisputed merit in establishing the institution and developing its collections.
As a student of the great Dechko Uzunov, Goev absorbed from him his breadth of brushstroke and the search for a rich, complex facture of painting. For a short while, we see in his early canvases a close adherence to realistic thinking, but also an attempt to make his escape through a more modern, synthetic understanding of the form.
The landscapist Vladimir Goev of the 1970s and 1980s is defined as an artist of quiet contemplation, emphasising the silence in his canvases as the main personage, suggested through a reserved monochromaticity, but also by a profundity of expression.
The exhibition presents works owned by the National Gallery, the Sofia City Art Gallery, and the artist’s heirs.
Curators: Aneliya Nikolaeva and Ivan Milev Media partner: BTA / Bulgarian News Agency.

Sofia Arsenal – Museum of Contemporary Art
Curator: Nadezhda Dzhakova, PhD
Bulgarian-born Mariana Vassileva has lived and worked in Germany for many years and has taken part in only a few exhibitions in her home country. Now the public have the opportunity to see her latest works, specially created for the museum space, as well as others not previously shown in Bulgaria, but included in museums and collections around the world.
Her solo exhibition includes sculptures, photographs, text, video art, and installations. Among this variety of media, the artist has sought the most accurate conceptual approach to realising her ideas. To the above, she has added light, which she transforms into an object.
In her works, she achieves a sense of aesthetic balance, poetry and beauty, a semantic echo of thinking and feeling resonating in her critical view of reality.
Vassileva’s exhibition began as an autobiographical account where childhood memories, her relationship with her mother and homeland all meet, but inevitably progressed to the political and social realities in which we live. ‘I am’ is now ‘we are’. Small personal slogans have become manifestos for freedom and human welfare.
What is it like, to live in a world devoid of empathy? For the artist, the most important is to remain yourself and to preserve your personal freedom, as she has emphasised through her work Be Yourself, which welcomes the viewer at the entrance to the museum. Flight is a daily necessity and a personal action that must be protected and defended…