Poet of the Landscape
Ognyan Stamboliev on the retrospective exhibition of Stefan Katsarov in Ruse
The renovated city art gallery in Ruse featured a large retrospective exhibition of one of the great painters, showcasing 98 paintings and 150 drawings.
For more than four decades, Stefan Katsarov has played an active role in the artistic life of Ruse and Bulgaria. Born in Sofia in 1937, he graduated from the Academy of Arts in 1967 and soon settled permanently in our Danube capital. By that time, the most European Bulgarian city had already established itself as one of the leading cultural centers of the country, with a strong presence of the plastic arts. For nearly two decades, Katsarov has been the curator and director of the Ruse Municipal Gallery, to the establishment and enrichment of which he has made an undeniable contribution. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, during the so-called “thaw” that began in Moscow, the strong Ruse group separated itself from the general trends in painting with its preference for chamber genres – still life, portrait and especially landscape. Lyrical in attitude, from the very beginning of his creative path Stefan Katsarov turned to landscape – he found it a more suitable genre for expressing his own feelings and experiences than figurative composition or portrait. He also worked in the field of still life, but his preferences were for natural scenes from the Danube and sea shores, hills, fields and vineyards from different regions of Bulgaria and especially from the Ruse region.
For over forty years, he traveled the country extensively, particularly the Ruse region, the banks of the Yantra and Ruseski Lom rivers (renowned for their beauty), where he found his inspiration. He deliberately chooses subjects that are often overlooked or hard to reach, such as secluded hills hidden among the bushes. These places represent the purest aspects of nature, capturing the essence of the grasses, the field flowers, and the earth warmed by the sun’s intense rays. These landscapes are wonderful and poetic. They always have an abundance of sky, light, and immense expanses. In them, impressionism and abstraction meet. These two currents were particularly impactful for his generation. They attract us with their comprehensibility and take us beyond the visible. This is a quality of true painting. In his paintings, Stefan Katsarov decisively avoids presenting us with a single natural motif. For him, the motif is just an occasion. His primary goal—which he achieves with remarkable ease—is to capture that elusive, unanticipated poetic moment that he has found in his immersion in nature. This is true pantheism!
A significant part of his works, more than those he is currently presenting at the invitation of the gallerist Eslitsa Popova, are filled with the classic egg tempera and gouache – his favorite technique, which he has undoubtedly mastered. There are also many works in nature that were painted “alla prima” with oil, watercolors, charcoal, and pencil.
Stefan Katsarov’s works are an unmistakable expression of profound, authentic experiences of the landscape, deeply felt by a true poet.
