Bulgarian painter, ceramicist, sculptor, mosaicist and designer Ivan Nenov was born in 1902 in Sofia. In 1925, he graduated in painting from the National Academy of Arts in Sofia. During the 1930s he declared his support for progressive tendencies in Bulgarian art by joining the New Artists’ Society, meanwhile working in his preferred media of oils and tempera. His compositions of monumental figures are painted in a style that stresses classical purity and decorative details (e.g. Morning, 1936; Sofia, National Art Gallery). In 1932 and during 1936-8 he worked in a design studio in Italy and during that time experimented with a post-Cubist style (e.g. Dolphinarium, 1938; Sofia, N.A.G.). Paintings such as By the Sea (1943), Girl with Fish (1946) and Sozopol’s Window (1958; all Sofia, N.A.G.) have vivid colour and strongly synthesized forms. From the 1930s he also produced ceramic objects and sculpture and worked in mosaic. He received an award for his work at the Triennale of Applied Arts in Milan in 1936. By the 1950s he was principally a ceramicist, exhibiting decorative pots with zoomorphic and anthropomorphic designs and small figurines, all made of terracotta or glazed chamotte, and having the female form as their principal subject. He regularly participated in the Venice Biennale, the Concórso Internazionale della Ceramica d’Arte in Faenza and in exhibitions in New York.
Music: P. Tchaikovsky Song without Words, Op. 40, No. 6
12 сен 2024
