Loran Gallery presents a collection of drawings by the great Bulgarian artist Ivan Milev (1897-1927). The collection originates from the legacy of the artist's daughter and grandchildren and is owned by the gallery. In the exhibition there are mainly works with pencil and chalk. These are mainly preparatory drawings and sketches related to the laboratory process in the creation of the painting. Another part refers to Milev's applied activity as a set designer, illustrator and decorator. In some of the examples we recognize identified ideas of completed works such as 'Refugees', 'Baba Marta', 'The Hero' and others. The exposition also shows several landscapes with architectural motifs from Tryavna, and most of them are sheets related to the artist's work on the competition for a monument on Shipka Peak (1925-1926).

Known mainly for his stylized compositions in color, Ivan Milev feels different in this chamber exhibition. From sketches to finished drawings, Milev can be experienced through the most intimate gestures of his hand. Drawings are always perceived as the most pure form, bringing us optimally closer to the artist, to his authentic 'self', to the spark of the creative impulse.

During his short life, Ivan Milev created greatly as artistic innovation and meaning. Even his modern contemporaries recognize his exceptional talent, his extraordinary ability to intertwine the native tradition with an avant-garde for Bulgarian art from the early twentieth century, a new artistic language. The great Bulgarian critic and aesthete Sirak Skitnik wrote about him in 1927 prophetically: “But years will pass and we will all feel the price of the gold he carried in his soul. And with the generosity of a fairy king, he poured into his decorative visions. It is unlikely that our country has given us another artist with a richer inner life, with more irresistible creative power: as if strange flowers grew from the chernozem of our homeland, carrying the legend of our past and the tale of the present.

Loran Gallery is preparing for printing a complete catalog of the collection by Anelia Nikolaeva.

The exhibition can be seen from October 27 to November 17 in the hall at 16 Oborishte Street in Sofia.

No official opening is planned.