The National Gallery and the Museum of Socialist Art Present the Exhibition 'Mythologems of the Heroic'

Museum of Socialist Art presents art from the socialist period in Bulgaria in a series of exhibitions organized by theme.

In the first few years after September 9, 1944 the political, economic and social change in Bulgaria, propaganda functions were imposed on art. One of the most important themes becomes the revolutionary, also known as historico-revolutionary, historical-heroic, and so on.

It recreates and glorifies important facts and events from the activities of the Left Progressive Forces in Bulgarian society, including the September 1923 Uprising, the Illegal Anti-Fascist Struggle, the Partisan Movement, and the events of September 1944.


Stoyan Venev "September Nights" 1962


The main character is a specific image category and one of the central mythologies in the art of socialism, tasked with creating idealized objects of worship and role models. The values scale includes moral-ethical categories such as courage, determination, sacrifice, self-denial and feat in the name of the ideal of freedom.

During the period of the Stalin cult of the personality, compositions of partisan themes and portraits of revolutionary movement figures were created, in which the accent was placed on the externally illustrative side of events and personalities. The unification of the artistic method leads to the dissolution of the personal author's handwriting and the mass reproduction of painting templates with predefined ideological content and stylistic-plastic frames.

After the April 1956 Plenum of Bulgarian Communist Party, Bulgarian art was gradually released from the restrictive dogmas of socialist realism. The rehabilitation of the personal civil and creative position and the return to the essential dimensions of the artistic process are reflected in the interpretation of the revolutionary theme. It was during this period that the most significant models were created, marking some of the highest achievements in Bulgarian art.


Nayden Petkov, ''Shot Dead Rebels'', 1963

In the 1970s and 1980s, the revolutionary-heroic theme was placed on the personal scale philosophical values in an effort to read from the position of modernity and from the distance of time.

The presented works reveal the rich spectrum of emotional-psychological states in which the theme of the heroic appears in a poetic, romantic or pathetic light. Its dynamics over the years is done by the individual in the historical personality, the collection type of the hero-fighter, the allegorical-symbolic summaries of the heroic at all and the revelation of its psychological essence.

Soon it is expected to be published bilingual catalogue.

The opening of the exhibition is on May 4, 18:00 at the Museum of Socialist Art.