In the history of Bulgarian art, there are numerous forgotten artists. However, few of them present as intriguing a case as Petar Dachev. His work unfolded during a period of intense artistic transformation, and his pieces bear witness to a sensitivity toward the new visual ideas and cultural processes of the first half of the 20th century. The exhibition “The Petar Dachev Case,” organized on the occasion of the 130th anniversary of the artist’s birth, is yet another research project by the Sofia City Art Gallery aimed at rethinking established historical perceptions and restoring the more complex picture of Bulgarian art between the two World Wars. The project brings together over 200 works that trace various aspects of the author’s creative and personal biography.

The exposition is built around two key moments in Petar Dachev’s oeuvre. The first is connected to his solo exhibition in 1924—an event that attracted the attention of art critics and his contemporaries alike. The works presented back then reveal an artist with a clearly declared attitude toward modernity and a pronounced interest in the new plastic solutions entering European art during the first decades of the century. The second core of the exhibition showcases the works created during the artist’s nearly ten-year stay in Istanbul. The encounter with the city gave rise to one of the largest thematic groups in his work. Streets, harbors, markets, architectural panoramas, and human figures build the image of a dynamic and multifaceted city, observed with close attention to its everyday environment and cultural specificity. The exhibition “The Petar Dachev Case” offers a fresh look at an author whose work continues to raise questions about the boundaries of Bulgarian modernism, the cultural routes of artists from the first half of the 20th century, and the ways in which historical memory of art is constructed.

A significant portion of the works has been provided by the Regional History Museum – Dobrich, a partner of the project and the institution that holds the largest collection of Petar Dachev’s artwork. Thanks to this collaboration, the exhibition offers the most comprehensive presentation to date of the artist and the various directions of his work.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue featuring research by the curators, alongside texts by Ani Venkova on the artist’s biography and by Kremena Miteva on his archival heritage. The design of both the exhibition and the printed publication is the work of Todor Manolov, and the project assistant is Nikoleta Gologanova.

Curators: Lyuben Domozetski and Ivo Milev