The exhibition is dedicated to the artist’s 80th birthday and traces his long creative career with 70 paintings from different periods.

Atanas Jekov is an artist with a style of his own. His feeling of color and form stayed with him throughout the years in his continual and unwavering quest for expression all of which made him a striking figure in Bulgarian art. His works are inspired by a reality that he experienced and combine analytical insight and in-depth expressive emotion.

The eminent landscapist Atanas Jekov achieved expressiveness, force and depth in still-life and portrait too. His controlled talent of a painter combined with the temperamental sense of color and made his paintings an emotional confession to a rich and harmonious reality that vibrates with life, light and passion.

It is mainly oil landscapes that were selected for the exhibition at the Sofia Art Gallery. The paintings reveal the discoveries and the artistic and human messages of the artist who passed away a short time ago.

—————————————————-

Atanas Jekov was born on 26 August 1926 in the town of Karnobat. He graduated in painting from the Art Academy in Sofia as a pupil of Prof. Iliya Petrov and Prof. Panayot Panayotov (1947–1953). Member of the Union of Bulgarian Artists (1953). Director of the Sofia City Art Gallery (1965–1972). Tutor at the Painting Department of the Art Academy (1972–1986).
His works were displayed in over 45 general art exhibitions and collective exhibitions, international exhibitions and pleinairs: Youth Festival in Bucharest (1953); Paris, Galerie Cherpantier (1963); Berlin (1967); Tokyo (1970); Szeczin (1972); Eisleben, Germany (1979) and other. He had more than 25 one-man exhibitions in and outside Bulgaria.
He organized an art gallery in his native town, Karnobat (1972) and donated 56 miniature paintings and graphic drawings to his native place in 1982 and 1996.
Awards for painting: the Award of the Union of Bulgarian Artists (1965); General Art Exhibition – Smolyan (1968); Honorary Sign of Szeczin (1972); Order Cyril and Methodius, first class (1967), and other.
His works are possessions of the National Art Gallery, the Sofia City Art Gallery, ministries, museums and art galleries in and outside Bulgaria – in Poland, Germany, Russia, Slovakia, Greece, Japan and elsewhere.
He died in 2006 in Sofia.