Moulin Rouge approves of Bulgarian artist’s dancing people

published on 5/13/10 9:11 AM

Photo: Veneta Pavlova

The Dance with Paris exhibition of Bulgarian artist Vanet was on display at the Art Gallery of the National Palace of Culture until end-April. Ivanka Tzekova alias Vanet has been residing in France since 1983. She graduated painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sofia in 1982. She earned a diploma of Art Aesthetics specialist at the Sorbonne in Paris.

Ever since she was 10 she earned a name for herself as a child prodigy after her first solo show. She was the protagonist of the documentary film “The little girl artist and the adults”, which had a screening at the opening of the current exhibition. The imagination, freedom and the taste for modernity revealed in those early works is astounding. In an interview for Radio Bulgaria the artist said that dancing figures were her favourite subject. They were very much appreciated at the famous Moulin Rouge nightclub in Paris. What is more she was allowed to use the cabaret’s 120-year-old world famous label. She signed a contract under which the canvases in question and the exhibition’s poster will remain part of Moulin Rouge’s archives. Much in the way the posters of Toulouse-Lautrec’s shows have been stored there.

“So far no other artist has been granted the permission,” Vanet says. “There are in France more than 50 000 artists and many of them wish to get closer to Moulin Rouge. I think this is important because now that I come to think of it, there is a 1 000 to one chance for an artist, and a Bulgarian one in particular, to be honoured this way. Overall, I think this is a recognition for my work and my imagination. The world I come up with is very much to the liking of Moulin Rouge management. The protagonists are close to reality without being its exact copies. I do not paint using photographs of female dancers as models. It is a world of my own, where everyone was made up like a cartoon character. This is what people like – the fact that made-up characters make one dream, and travel to another world that resembles the real one and yet is not.”

Bright vivid colours, figures in motion, rhythm is what Vanet’s paintings exhume. Despite the common subject the images do not repeat one another.

“I always paint to the sound of music,” the artist goes on to say. “I play music that has good rhythm, and once the images storm my imagination, I create the composition with the help of lines and colours. This is how the protagonists emerge on the canvas. It is only after I get down to the details that they gain shape, physiognomy and character. This is what I enjoy doing while painting. I cannot draw a single picture without a figure. The current exhibition contains three abstract works. My daughter, who currently acts as my assistant, made them. She graduated foreign languages and civilizations in Paris, and is now reading art history. She has the same talent for rhythm, colour and composition that I possess. And everything comes naturally, as if without any effort. She plays some music on, sits in front of the canvas and creates paintings that do not tell a story, but are rich in colour, lines, shapes and rhythm.”

Vanet admits that she cannot paint without figures. She is interested in people, their bodies and movements. She is searching for the beauty in them. It could be the Belle Epoque, or the 1920s, or the present day, but even if the canvas looks as if painted in Paris in 1900, it contains modern elements coming from the contemporary world. She said that establishing herself as an artist in Paris was a true endeavour. But she began working for the gallery of the Montmartre collectorsin the early 1990s. Nowadays hundreds of collections all over the world boast works by the Bulgarian artist. She is member of the Union of French artists. She works upon commission, too, but unleashes truly her imagination only with the dancing figures.

English version by Radostin Zhelev

По публикацията работи: Veneta Pavlova

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Moulin Rouge approves of Bulgarian artist’s dancing people

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