Liuben Dimanov was born in 1933 in the town Knezha. In 1959 he graduated in ‘Decorative Monumental Arts’ from the National Academy of Arts in Sofia, under Professor Bogdanov. The painter has become permanently interested in graphic art, illustration and drawing. In the same time he has been working in the field of painting and mural-monumental art. He has been an active participant in international life since the time of his graduation – he took part in the Youth Biennale in Paris in 1961, 1963, 1965, and in the graphic art biennales in Ljubljana, London, Rome, Australia, Moscow, Sao Paulo.

He organized his first one-man show in 1972 in Knezha. It was followed by exhibitions in Sofia, Stockholm, London, Paris, Düsseldorf, Zurich, Lyons, Oslo, Luxemburg, Copenhagen, Vienna and many more. Liuben Dimanov is the author of numerous illustrations and graphic folios for editions by Bulgarian and world authors. Some of the books he has worked on are: Mark Aurelius ‘Pensee pour moi-meme’ – 1978, Paris; Baudelaire ‘Flowers of Evil’ -1979, Dusseldorf; Selma Lagerloeuf ‘The saga of Joster Berliner’-1980 Galleriet Oster, Sweden, Ovidius ‘Metamorphoses’ -1981, Paris, Apoliner ‘Alcohols’ -1981, Shakespeare ‘Sonnets’ – 1983, Stockholm, ‘Le Bestiaire’ –1984, Paris, ‘When the flame and the rose are one’– 1986, London, Mallarmee ‘Mytologie’ -1991, Paris and more.

He has received numerous awards in the filed of graphic art and drawing, as well as awards for his book illustrations both in Bulgaria and abroad. In 1974 he won Second Prize for illustration at the International Book Exhibition in Moscow. In 1986 he received the Painting Prize of the International Contemporary Art Center in Paris.
The painter, who went to live in Paris in 1976, is a guest of the Sofia Art Gallery with a large retrospective exhibition. This is his fifth representative exposition in the capital – after the exhibitions at the National Academy of Arts in 1980 and 1983, in the gallery in 125 Rakovski Street in 1989, and in the National Gallery for Foreign At in 1995.

The present exhibition includes paintings, drawing, collages and graphics in which the techniques of etching, lithography and monotype can be observed. The works exhibited trace different stages in the creative life of Liuben Dimanov. Works from the painter’s early period are featured in the exposition –the time when he worked in Bulgaria (60s to mid 70s of the 20th century) and works created after 1976. They are united by the power of the monumental, synthetically simplified drawing and the dynamics of the color spot. The basic means of expression used is the line. We can observe it in its various types- from the plastic creation of the shape, through the skillful outlining of the drapery to the symbolic associations provoked by the detail.