Emil Stoychev

Emil Stoychev (b. 1935) is one of the most important figures in Bulgarian visual art of the second half of the 20 th century.
His first public appearance took place in this very building when, in 1961, he exhibited two of his works at the iconic First Collective Youth Art Exhibition. This exhibition is famous for having been the first significant artistic “thaw” following Stalin’s death and the April Plenum of the Bulgarian Communist Party (1956). At that exhibition, he showed his work alongside artists such as Atanas Patsev, Vesa Vasileva, Georgi Baev, Georgi Bozhilov, Dimitar Kirov, Encho Pironkov, Ivan Stoilov – Bunkera, Yoan Leviev, Lika Yanko, Lyuben Dimanov, Maria Stolarova, Svetlin Roussev, Todor Tsonev, Hristo Stefanov, Yanaki Manasiev, Alexander Dyakov, Valentin Starchev, and others—artists whose generation would come to be known as the April Generation and who, in the years to follow, would shape the new face of Bulgarian visual art. Stoychev was recognized as a phenomenon from the very start, with his first solo exhibition (1965) receiving acclaim from art critics and observers of the artistic scene with an eye for innovation, such as Kiril Krastev, Vladimir Svintila, and Dimitar Avramov...

This typical urban man and artist started out as a landscape painter. From the mid-1970s onward, the figural characters that had sporadically inhabited his landscapes, landscape compositions (or thematic compositions,” as Axinia Djurova calls them), and interiors would take on a dominant role with a fundamentally altered function—they would become the main organizing center around which the plot of his compositional decisions would unfold.
Emil Stoychev would transform into a narrative, allegorical artist, a quality he has retained to this day. This new change began with his developments and experiments in the genre of portraiture and self-portraiture. From a classical portrait, the canvas transforms into a portrait composition:
Portrait of Atanas Yaranov (1975), Portrait of Georgi Chapkanov (1976), etc. The painting began to turn into a rebus, into a semantic field, with the psychology of human figures being of decisive interest.

For the past 30 years, Emil Stoychev has divided his time between Paris and Sofia, and he continues to work. With the passage of time, he seems to be fleeing from the wide spaces of his landscapes and compositions and returning to the limited circle of an interior space, just as he himself is becoming more and more reserved and solitary: I prefer the icy breath of solitude, says the artist.

Stoychev's figurative language becomes more and more mysterious and difficult to penetrate. He tries to share with us, speaking to us in parables.
But why this complicated language, which seems to pose an impediment to sharing rather than an aid? In fact, it is because this is the only way messages can be sent; this is the language of messages—more a witty and veiled game, a rebus, a proverb, a riddle than a thesis.
Emil Stoychev is not a moralizer, and here he is a skeptic, treating the activities of life, our struggles and vicissitudes, with a degree of mockery and an ironic smile.
In a painting there must be a mystery, enigmatic things, says Stoychev. The secret is tempting and attractive as long as it remains a secret.
When it is revealed, it becomes no more than a banality. That is, we can only be oriented towards the secret.
And the only discovery, unveiling, that is worth it is our own discovery and our own unveiling, the energy invested in it.
This is the simple economy of the secret.

Emil Stoychev is one of those frantic heroes who have tried to free themselves from the grip of the world and its conventions, which we conform to in order to live. It is an illusion, and better that it be beautiful…

Ivo Milev, curator