Stefan Katsarov “Painting and Drawing”

Stefan Katsarov has brought his whole world here.
The works vary in chronology, material, genre and mood. The early works we found are "Landscape" and "Portrait of Shopa". They were made in the second year of the HA in the early 1960s. We took the portrait from the artist's easel that day.

Stefan's a landscape painter. He's all about walking to exhaustion in nature and getting lost in it. He finds all these viewpoints. Some of them are favourites. I've seen loads of versions of the Mechka Est terrains in different materials, light and seasons. He's done everything from pencil drawings to gouache, watercolour, pastel, charcoal and oil, but his favourite has to be egg tempera. Not many authors can master this classic technique. Even fewer work with it on this scale.

Katsarov's tempera paintings are known for their unique matte finish and layering of colour. He's a real maestro of harmonies, probably influenced by the music he listens to and understands so deeply, as well as the sound of nature. "I wanted to paint landscapes," says SK, "but there was no such specialty at the Academy of Fine Arts. So we painted figures and portraits with their characters for five years." He had to study the character of the landscape himself. And he nailed it.

I met SK in the meadows in Rusenski Lom. He was wandering around all day with a sketchbook and a camera. He used to drag boxes of oil paints and canvases around with him. On crowded buses and rugged terrain. The drawings, with ink and stains from Paris and Prague, the Dutch canals and Sozopol boats, the landscapes from Crimea and China, are the result of his consistent research into the landscape in depth and from nature. Which is no mean feat. He's been chased by dogs and drunkards, teased by madmen, and spoken to in foreign languages he couldn't understand, but he's still painted his landscape religiously. Stefan's approach is like a sport, you know, with all that walking, carrying a lot of stuff, navigating tricky terrain and weather, and all that.
"When the painting's wet, put a newspaper on it so you don't stain the bus passengers." Every painting and drawing has its own story, from finding the right point of view to darkening the picture and putting it away. Life – adventurous!

Sometimes the canal lock opens and the boats sink, sometimes they cut down a tree or make a road. "They ruined my landscape" – Stefan complains.

The grisailles; the delicate pencil drawings, where the staccato of the pencil hits the horizontally placed strokes in the foreground; the ribbing of the dry pastel on the blossoming trees; the decisive charcoal drawing on the composition, the strokes of the small brush in the oil landscape – the variations of Katsarov's gesture are in a range rarely seen among artists of this latitude.

He was taught that "an exhibition should have portraits, nudes, still lifes and landscapes". And that's exactly what we've got here. Mostly landscapes, actually.

Big thanks to Stefan for collecting and showing his work to the Ruse public and the guests of the Art Gallery. We're delighted that someone as talented as Stefan Katsarov lives and works here in Ruse.