AUTHOR OF HIS TIME

In my memos from 30 or 35 years ago (more memoir than art criticism), I have noted an argument with Svilen Blazhev on the subject of artist unions, groups and more specifically, the Union of Bulgarian Artists. Back then, we were on opposing sides of the opinion spectrum. Much more recently – only a couple of months ago, in fact – we had a similar argument, and once more we took opposing views on the subject – only this time, we had switched our viewpoints from the distant past.

I mention these episodes only because for Svilen, contradiction is innate. Especially when this seeming contradiction is an expression of consistency, a sort of personal progression. Such processes are characteristic of his art as well. The notion of “art”, when applied to Svilen Blazhev, does not sound strained and far-fetched, because he is the quintessential artist – he has the skills, he has developed his own technology, his work is grounded in wholesome, tried and tested values. Much more appropriate, however, is the word “master”, because he has a style of his own. Svilen is a key protagonist on our art stage, where the main characters are flanked by a legion of epigones (and I mean this notion in the Greek-rooted sense of the word, not the current meaning). He is very well aware of this, but seems to pay no heed, considering it a natural phenomenon, to the point of oversight when it comes to direct borrowings from his oeuvre. In this, he defends his own notion of a school, maybe even defined as “national”.

For Svilen Blazhev, the definition “national style” is loaded with various meanings and contents. Even back as a student, in his live-in studio in the attic opposite the Architects Club (then on Dimitar Polianov and now on Krakra Street), at the end of the 1970s, he was searching for his own, tradition-based structures, factures and expressions. At the same time, his experimental drive, his bold nature and his knowledge (he was studying mural at the Art Academy), all contributed to highlighting additional facets of his talent. Back in those years, he was mixing relief with painting (the only local equivalent were the early works of Vanko Urumov), figuration with extreme provisionality, modern narrative with medieval metaphor. In time, Svilen developed his style even further. I am tempted to mention heavy-hitting foreign examples like El Greco, Kiefer, Wols, Bernique, Sironi, Paladino or Art Informel, some currents of the Romanian school, Greece and Byzantium, which the artist himself most often points to as an inspiration. From our own authors, his aesthetic neighbours are Atanas Yaranov, Petar Dochev, Stanislav Pamukchiev and some others. I will not deal with his epigones, which represent a special case. By the way, the artist has a plethora of multi-directional, innate relationships with the Bulgarian generation of artists born in the 1950s – relationships which are best left to a separate analysis.

In an essay of his, Svilen Blazhev classifies and names some of his own periods, called “Yules”, “Byzantium”, “Folk”, etc. This should be enough for his characterization up to the end of the 20th century. However, he has also been working in classical landscapes, still lives and compositions. I say “classical” because they are characteristically “Svilen”, rather than in tune with the beginning of the 20th century – something typical for most of his contemporaries who are oriented to traditional genres.

The artist’s monumental works are in a typology of their own. He has enough extant examples in the country for a characterization to be pursued, but the comparison with his cavaletto oeuvre is often unavoidable and both can be included in the common current of his work. Perhaps only The Egg, from the second half of the 1980s, has some specific peculiarities, even more so as it comprises only one series. With one of these works, Svilen enlisted himself in the so-called Bulgarian avant-garde, but he was also quick to de-list himself when he felt that individualism is a better match for his personal progress and his artistic path.

With his art, Svilen Blazhev reminds us that modern space can also live through tradition. The nature of this process is both aesthetic and symbolic. Here he does not turn to hermeneutics, but rather to meanings that search for the genealogy of modernity. He understands that the language of art has its own history, it has no end and it can not be archaic. This, in fact, is what makes his artistic decisions modern.

In the beginning of the 21st century, Svilen Blazhev made a series of icons, at the same time continuing his work in abstractions and landscapes. He has achieved the most extraordinary colour combinations – cerulean blue and umber, for example, or ochre, grey and pinks. In a workshop for students of the Sofia Art School he led in Debut art gallery in 2013, the artist demonstrated how he stylizes the body to suggest immaculate purity when dealing with religious themes. In effect, he stylizes erotic imagery to the utmost abstraction, without losing the notion of eroticism altogether. Such decisions are an artistic patent of his.

My condition for writing these lines about Svik (as we, his friends, call him) was to underline the personal, the biographical and, perhaps, the memories. I realize what a risk it would constitute to follow this direction, so it is on purpose that I shun it. But more importantly, I feel that this is not what is essential about Svilen. He is more real in art than in personal existence (where he often plays, hiding his spiritual vulnerability).
Svilen Blazhev is one of the great artists of our time. I am not afraid to voice such a vulnerable thought, precisely because I accepted the condition to write something personal. And I, personally, would be hard pressed to point out a great number of artists for whom such an ascertainment can be made.

In the last ten or so years, Svilen Blazhev made the transition from natural materials (paint, earth, straw…) to using imitation leather, plastic, metal surfaces. He went from plasticization to the conceptual value of clean, smooth, industry-standard materials. In the context of his overall progress, this is once more an implicit mythopoeia of the near past. Only this time, it is not about “Yules”, “Byzantium”, the Middle Ages or the Renaissance – it is about evaluating the vision that characterized the 1960s. In this way, Svilen goes from modernity to a neo-modernity, to the current times – and this is where his next contribution lies.

Dimitar Grozdanov