The exhibition seeks to reconsider Édouard Manet’s famous painting “The Luncheon on the Grass” – a theme that was subject to various interpretations long before Manet approached it, while his own painting inspired the creation of numerous replicas in the decades to follow.

“The Luncheon on the Grass” prompted Roumen Skorchev to recapitulate his years-long life and artistic experience, to reconstruct well-established notions, to provide his own interpretation of aesthetical and moral values. In his variations on the theme, complete with his signature dynamic stroke of the brush and intense colors, he creates an intense sensation of the anxiety of the modern day and age, while searching for various perspectives on timeless questions and unresolved conflicts of human life. Going beyond the subject of Manet’s painting, the artist turns the theme into a field of his visual revelations, as well as into an intimate spiritual space of his own.
The Sofia City Art Gallery-hosted exhibition features exclusively new, previously un-exhibited works, created over the last few years. Roumen Scorchev presents his interpretations of the theme in 20 paintings and a selection of the numerous sketches and studies preceding them.

A richly illustrated exhibition catalogue is available*.

Academician Roumen Skorchev was born in 1932 in the town of Turgoviste. He earned a major in park construction and engineering in 1957, and in 1964 he graduated from the Academy Arts, where he has been holding a professorship ever since 1984. He has won more than 40 awards home and abroad. He has illustrated a large number of books for both children and adults. He was awarded a fellowship by the Japanese Kokucai Koryu Kikin Foundation. Works of his are featured in the Japanese two-volume edition presenting 300 leading graphic artists of the 20th century. In 1970 he was awarded a gold medal at the International Florence Biennial, the awarded work having been added to the Uffizi Gallery collection. Paintings of his present Bulgaria at the Albertina Museum, Vienna, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C., Dordrechts Museum, Dordrecht, the Netherlands, and many other museums and private collections around the world.