Show map events
Wednesday 24 May 2023
22 May 2023 - 28 May 2023
October 2024
24.05.2023
National and Official Holidays
20.02.2023 - 31.12.2023
THE APOSTLE’S CONFESSION
Multimedia exposition dedicated to 150 years since the death of the Apostle of Freedom, Vasil Levski.
Using holographic technology on a large-scale video wall, a re-enactment of the trial of the Apostle of Freedom is displayed, and significant moments of his life are brought back to life. Veselin Plachkov portrays Vasil Levski. Actors Ivan Trenev, Lyubov Pavlova, Rumen Ivanov, Alexander Georgiev, Biser Marinov and Nikola Dodov are also participants. Nelly Dimitrova is the screenwriter; Dimitar Gochev, the director; Simeon Parashkevov and Dimitar Gochev, cinematographers; Atanas Gendov, composer; Pirina Veselinova, Evgeni Gospodinov and the Svetoglas Quartet, musical performers; sensor studio, animation and mapping; Hristo Karagyozov, audio mixing and post-production; Ivo Milev, creative producer; and Tsvetoslav Borisov, executive producer.
The National Gallery and the Vasil Levski All-Bulgarian Committee created the exposition, with the financial support of the Ministry of Culture and donations by the Lachezar Tsotsorkov Foundation, Kaufland Bulgaria EOOD, Aurubis Bulgaria JSC, Vazovski Machinery Works JSC – Sopot, and patriotic Bulgarians.
Kvadrat 500, entrance at 95, Vasil Levski Blvd., Sofia
Opening hours:
Tuesday–Sunday, 10 a.m.– 6 p.m.
The screenings are 30 minutes away, starting at 10 am
Bookings for groups of up to 20 people: +359 879 834 025
FREE ADMISSION
Using holographic technology on a large-scale video wall, a re-enactment of the trial of the Apostle of Freedom is displayed, and significant moments of his life are brought back to life. Veselin Plachkov portrays Vasil Levski. Actors Ivan Trenev, Lyubov Pavlova, Rumen Ivanov, Alexander Georgiev, Biser Marinov and Nikola Dodov are also participants. Nelly Dimitrova is the screenwriter; Dimitar Gochev, the director; Simeon Parashkevov and Dimitar Gochev, cinematographers; Atanas Gendov, composer; Pirina Veselinova, Evgeni Gospodinov and the Svetoglas Quartet, musical performers; sensor studio, animation and mapping; Hristo Karagyozov, audio mixing and post-production; Ivo Milev, creative producer; and Tsvetoslav Borisov, executive producer.
The National Gallery and the Vasil Levski All-Bulgarian Committee created the exposition, with the financial support of the Ministry of Culture and donations by the Lachezar Tsotsorkov Foundation, Kaufland Bulgaria EOOD, Aurubis Bulgaria JSC, Vazovski Machinery Works JSC – Sopot, and patriotic Bulgarians.
Kvadrat 500, entrance at 95, Vasil Levski Blvd., Sofia
Opening hours:
Tuesday–Sunday, 10 a.m.– 6 p.m.
The screenings are 30 minutes away, starting at 10 am
Bookings for groups of up to 20 people: +359 879 834 025
FREE ADMISSION
Exhibitions
03.05.2023 - 26.06.2023
JOSEPH Tasnádi: Puzzlements
Curator: Dr. Szabolcs Süli-Zakar
Sofia Arsenal – Museum of Contemporary Art
‘What art is can neither be grasped nor determined—one can only feel it.’ Joseph Tasnádi
Joseph Tasnádi’s exhibition is a review of his post-2010 oeuvre, consisting of installations, interventions, and digital experiments, along with some earlier drawings. His uniquely resonant lyrical installations, as well as the intellectual and sensitively poeticised objects, enter a dialogue with each other and start weaving an associative network of additional meanings.
A version of the exhibition took place in 2022 at the MODEM Center for Modern and Contemporary Art, Debrecen, Hungary.
Tasnádi’s creative career incorporates an array of artistic disciplines and genres, yet his writings, drawings, digital experiments, installations, and interventions form an extraordinarily coherent and organic whole. They illustrate poetic and artistic aspects of a profound experience. Tasnádi seeks his inspiration, not inside but outside, art. He finds things. Things that spontaneously connect themselves with metacontents, such as hope, memory, death, the impossibility of communication, paradox, place, time, presence, or of their lack.
At the same time, he examines the relationships between technology and art. In recent years, his work has focused on the bonds between man and machine, the relationship of technology, metaphoric perspective, and poetic thinking.
He thematises important questions with hybrid contemporary artistic methods in which (scientific) research, (artistic) elaboration/reflection and the demand for poetic synthesis are deeply inter-connected.
Sofia Arsenal – Museum of Contemporary Art
‘What art is can neither be grasped nor determined—one can only feel it.’ Joseph Tasnádi
Joseph Tasnádi’s exhibition is a review of his post-2010 oeuvre, consisting of installations, interventions, and digital experiments, along with some earlier drawings. His uniquely resonant lyrical installations, as well as the intellectual and sensitively poeticised objects, enter a dialogue with each other and start weaving an associative network of additional meanings.
A version of the exhibition took place in 2022 at the MODEM Center for Modern and Contemporary Art, Debrecen, Hungary.
Tasnádi’s creative career incorporates an array of artistic disciplines and genres, yet his writings, drawings, digital experiments, installations, and interventions form an extraordinarily coherent and organic whole. They illustrate poetic and artistic aspects of a profound experience. Tasnádi seeks his inspiration, not inside but outside, art. He finds things. Things that spontaneously connect themselves with metacontents, such as hope, memory, death, the impossibility of communication, paradox, place, time, presence, or of their lack.
At the same time, he examines the relationships between technology and art. In recent years, his work has focused on the bonds between man and machine, the relationship of technology, metaphoric perspective, and poetic thinking.
He thematises important questions with hybrid contemporary artistic methods in which (scientific) research, (artistic) elaboration/reflection and the demand for poetic synthesis are deeply inter-connected.
Exhibitions
09.05.2023 - 20.08.2023
NINA RUSEVA: ATLANTIS
The ‘Atlantis’ exhibition is an adventure of the senses, an open door to the notion of reality and the past, a bold and dreamy inducement to encounter the unknown or the non-existent, even if only in one pictorial world.
Nina Ruseva created most of these paintings specifically for the occasion. The extreme, exciting emotional experience physically separates us from the reality surrounding us and conveys us to distant worlds. Peru, the Antarctic, Perperikon, or the lost lands of Atlantis—all unfold before the eyes of the viewer, refracted through the personal emotion and sensibility of the artist, through the rich imagination and curiosity towards the unknown that she materialises in her painting.
Nina Ruseva’s landscapes occupy the boundary between abstraction and reality—effulgent and temperamental, creating a sense of dynamism and, at the same time, bringing tranquillity to a desolate space dominated by natural forms. The large formats allow for a bold handling of form, colour, and large strokes thickly applied to the canvas.
The bright palette and frequent use of dark contours are distinguishing features of Nina Ruseva’s figurative language, reinforcing the feeling of the illusoriness of natural scenes.
Nina Ruseva created most of these paintings specifically for the occasion. The extreme, exciting emotional experience physically separates us from the reality surrounding us and conveys us to distant worlds. Peru, the Antarctic, Perperikon, or the lost lands of Atlantis—all unfold before the eyes of the viewer, refracted through the personal emotion and sensibility of the artist, through the rich imagination and curiosity towards the unknown that she materialises in her painting.
Nina Ruseva’s landscapes occupy the boundary between abstraction and reality—effulgent and temperamental, creating a sense of dynamism and, at the same time, bringing tranquillity to a desolate space dominated by natural forms. The large formats allow for a bold handling of form, colour, and large strokes thickly applied to the canvas.
The bright palette and frequent use of dark contours are distinguishing features of Nina Ruseva’s figurative language, reinforcing the feeling of the illusoriness of natural scenes.
Exhibitions
12.05.2023 - 11.06.2023
NICHOLAS ROERICH | 30 HIMALAYAN MOUNTAINSCAPES
Nicholas Roerich (1874–1947) is widely known not only as an artist, but also as a writer, archaeologist, scientist, public figure, philosopher and enlightener. He spent decades of his life touring and exploring the Himalayas, which also became his home. In the 1930s and 1940s, the artist studied these mountains in a series of landscapes and, investing his spiritual insights, reflected the beauty and mysticism of the region, capturing the picturesque scenery in the changing seasons and at different times of the day.
The National Gallery owns some 250 works by the painter, which were donated to the Bulgarian state in the late 1970s by his son, Svetoslav Roerich. The present exhibition includes 30 landscapes that take us to places whose mystique and mysteriousness are visible to the spiritually enlightened.
Among Nicholas Roerich’s indisputable merits was the initiation of Pax Cultura—the Treaty on the Protection of Artistic and Scientific Institutions and Historic Monuments (The Roerich Pact). This Treaty for the protection of cultural monuments was signed in Washington, in the presence of US President Franklin Roosevelt, on 15 April 1935, by all the member-state plenipotentiaries of the Pan American Union.
It envisaged that all sites over which the Banner of Peace was flown—museums, universities, architectural monuments, among others—should be considered as neutral, international territory, and with the protection of cultural heritage both in time of war and in time of peace to be regulated.
The National Gallery owns some 250 works by the painter, which were donated to the Bulgarian state in the late 1970s by his son, Svetoslav Roerich. The present exhibition includes 30 landscapes that take us to places whose mystique and mysteriousness are visible to the spiritually enlightened.
Among Nicholas Roerich’s indisputable merits was the initiation of Pax Cultura—the Treaty on the Protection of Artistic and Scientific Institutions and Historic Monuments (The Roerich Pact). This Treaty for the protection of cultural monuments was signed in Washington, in the presence of US President Franklin Roosevelt, on 15 April 1935, by all the member-state plenipotentiaries of the Pan American Union.
It envisaged that all sites over which the Banner of Peace was flown—museums, universities, architectural monuments, among others—should be considered as neutral, international territory, and with the protection of cultural heritage both in time of war and in time of peace to be regulated.
Exhibitions
24.05.2023
OFFICIAL CHANGE OF THE GUARD IN FRONT OF THE PRESIDENCY BUILDING
In front of the Presidency
The ceremonial change of the guard in front of the Presidency marks the national and public holidays in Bulgaria. The official change of the guard takes place on the first Wednesday of every month at 12:00 o’clock.
Festivals