Stefan Fartunov Hall
Period: August 15, 2025 – January 10, 2026
The exhibition The Bright Side of Life brings together works from the Museum’s art collection and guest canvases by a total of 30 Bulgarian artists, who are meeting for the first time in a specially prepared exhibition. The works presented are constructed through naive expression – one of the most immediate and exciting artistic styles of our time.
For some of the authors, naivety is a main line in their work, for others – a short period, for others – a thread that appears episodically. What connects them is serenity – one of the distinctive features of this style. They almost always choose to see the glass half full.
Naive art entered the world art scene at the beginning of the 20th century – with the jungles of Le Douanier Rousseau and the Artists of the Sacred Heart group in France, with the naive poetry of Niko Pirosmani in Georgia and, a little later, with the canvases of Grandma Moses in the USA. These early paintings were the work of unschooled authors, distinguished by a lacking or distorted perspective, as well as by bright, raw colors, like windows to an instinctive world.
Like any artistic movement, naive art has no strict boundaries or objective criteria for recognition. Nowadays, many of the artists using naive expression have an artistic education and the creation of art is their conscious choice and vocation, and not an intuitive need, as with the first naive artists.
And what does art naive look like today? For us, these are the works that make us smile, sometimes because of the deliberate or completely spontaneous childish ease, sometimes because of the wink hidden in the story, or simply because of the positive mood that flows from the canvases. These are paintings free from academic canons, with a direct expression of feelings, moods, dreams – a flight to a better world, where everything is light, airy, liberated.
May the smiles that this exhibition awakens stay with you for a long time – as a sunny reminder of the bright side of life.
The exhibition features:
Angel Vasilev, Gancho Karabadzhakov, Georgi Georgiev, Georgi Yordanov, Georgi Panov, Grigor Nechev, Daria Vasilianska, Elisaveta Angelova, Emanuela Bayrakova-Popgencheva, Zdravko Yonchev, Irina Hristova, Kalina Atanasova, Keazim Isinov, Kiril Bozhkilov, Kosta Forev, Lika Yanko, Lyubov Toteva, Lyubomir Minkovski, Lyudmil Mladenov, Mariela Dimitrova – Mara, Nikolay Angelov – Gary, Nikolay Stoev, Radi Nedelchev, Rosen Rashev – Roshpaka, Rumen Gasharav, Stayo Garnoev, Stoyan Bozhkilov, Suleiman Seferov, Todor Pavlov, Hristo Stoychev.
Research and preparation of the exhibition:
Curator: Daniela Osikovska
Fine Art Department, Museum of Humor and Satire
Translation: Nevena Ekimova
Graphic design: Anton Ivanov, Studio Mozaika
Printing of exhibition graphics: Visart