The exhibition “Founded in Wartime, Preserved Through Art”, prepared on the occasion of the Day of Bravery and Day of the Bulgarian Army, is part of the programme celebrating the 110th anniversary of the Museum’s creation.
The exhibition takes us back to 1916 – a trying period for Bulgaria in the midst of the First World War, but also a time when the institution dedicated to preserving the memory of the Bulgarian Army was born. That same year, Bulgarian artists, having become witnesses and chroniclers of the events unfolding at the front, represented the country at the Great Art Exhibition in Berlin – a prestigious international forum that put Bulgaria on the map of European art. Hundreds of works by dozens of authors headed for Germany to tell about the war, but also about life beyond it. After their return to Bulgaria, a significant portion of them were acquired by the Ministry of War and marked the beginning of the Museum’s first collection, also one of the most significant art collections in the country – that of the National Museum of Military History.
It is precisely these works that form the basis of the current exhibition, though this time not as emissaries of a country at war, but as witnesses who transport us back to that moment when war, art, and memory intertwined. Among the authors are some of the biggest names in Bulgarian art, like the military artists Jaroslav Věšín, Boris Denev, Dimitar Gyudzhenov, Aleksandar Bozhinov, Aleksandar Mutafov, Vladimir Dimitrov – the Master, Dimitar Yonchev – Kriskarets, Nikola Kozhuharov, Konstantin Shtarkelov, Rayko Aleksiev, Stanyo Stamatov, Hristo Kavarnaliev, Chudomir, Yakim Banchev, the sculptors Ivan Lazarov, Mihail Mihaylov, Petar Lambrev, and more.
