Pavel Koychev is among the most interesting Bulgarian sculptors. He has had dozens of one-man exhibitions abroad and at home but he has made a name for the often-strange places he chooses for exhibiting his works in latter years. Some of them are displayed among nature, far from cities, in the middle of a river or in the fields near the village of Ossikovitsa, Northern Bulgaria. Diana Dinolova tells us more about him.

“He shows with his works that he can do whatever he likes, he can work in any material he chooses and bring home any idea. Endlessly talented and precise in his projects beyond all standards – that makes Pavel Koychev an outstanding sculptor. His works are present in almost all large Bulgarian galleries. Many of them are bought abroad – Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Spain and Belgium.

Koychev lives and works free of any fashions. He masterfully blends his bold ideas on every project with the peaceful life in his home among his two daughters and his wife with whom he has shared the last 41 years of his life. In the last two years his fans have been able to see several expositions of his: “Water Grazing”, the artistic eco-house in Ossikovitsa, the exhibition “We and they, they and we” displayed in the new gallery “Industrial 11”. The last exhibition was prepared within 6 moths only. The author shared that he never engages with a project unless he has at least a year to think it over and make his works.

Koychev marked simultaneously two anniversaries – his 70th birthday and 55 years of work as a sculptor. As it often happens in life, taking up sculpture was rather the result of a hazard for him. He grew up with his mother only and started drawing even before school. His passion for painting and the stubbornness of a teenager took him to the art school in Sofia. Shortly after that he lived through a kind of “catastrophe” as he used to call the event at that time. He failed at the annual drawing exam. According to the rules he had to either leave school and sit for the entrance exams again or strike the highest mark in his next exam, which was sculpture. He chose the second option. He put all his zeal in his work, which was a mask of Donatello’s carpenter. He got a 6 – the highest mark in Bulgaria, and that success traced his artistic life from then on. “Before that moment I had never dreams of taking up sculpture. I hated that dirty job. And when I made my choice my mother told me jokingly – well son, you chose to stay in the dirt”, Pavel Koychev recalls.

He successfully graduated from the Art Academy. For a long time he avoided professional guild associations and tried to make a career without them. But he came to realize that he stood little chances of being given work unless he became member of the Union of Bulgarian Artists. He was admitted in 1979, last in the list. Public commissions followed and life became easier for him. In the period 1976-1997 he received numerous distinctions but his best cherished is the award on the name of sculptor Ivan Lazarov – 1984 and the other one on the name of Marko Markov – 1987. After the democratic changes he realized that he no longer had to wait for commissions but was free work as he pleased. Prior to 1989 he had been working for two months at “Cite internationale des Arts” in Paris and another two months in a rock sculpture symposium in Sydney. He had gained an idea of what free artists round the world were doing. That is why he did not plunge into the general euphoria of transition days but just got down to hard work.

Nowadays, from the depth of his experience the down-to-earth artist of childish naivety shares: “Every person has in him something uniquely his own, absolutely personal. When an artist creates something, he infuses his work with this uniqueness. But it is one and only. So it turns out as if he is doing the same things all his life. Forms are different but depth remains the same – over and over again. So the works reveal the entire essence of the author. Perhaps that is why sculptors hate talking about their works. Why should they stand naked twice? Everything is inside the piece of art. A person can only do what he is really capable of doing and what he is, himself”, sculptor Pavel Koychinov concludes.

English version: Iva Letnikova