The Salon of Arts traditionally takes place in Sofia in May. The festival events are attended by some 80,000 fans of dance, music and visual arts.

French artist Elisabeth Calmes is a participant in this year’s 21^st edition of the Salon of Arts. Born in Luxembourg but living in Paris, she first came to Bulgaria in 2013 with the Canta Lex choir with Bulgarian conductor Tsvetan Dobrev. While she was playing one of his compositions – Resurrect – in Tsvetan Dobrev’s home town Kazanluk, Elisabeth Calmes came to the realization that her contact with Bulgarian music was to be her bond with Bulgaria. She was grabbed by the beauty of the Bulgarian lands, the colours of the villages and monasteries, the quaint traditions. Upon her return to France she started her cycle of paintings from Bulgaria. In April she presented her unique exhibition “Bulgarian resonance” at the Via Artis – Kroum Tanchev gallery in Plovdiv. 

Here is what Elisabeth Calmes said just before the opening of her exhibition in Sofia:

“Until 2013 I knew next to nothing about Bulgaria. I met people who had preserved and translated their sorrows and their values into poetry, music, painting. It was a meeting that had a great impact on me. I was astounded by the beauty and the richness of your monasteries, churches, icons. And in France I spent two years thinking about Bulgaria. I started reading Bulgarian literature, poetry by Hristo Botev and that helped me create my book Resurrect with impressions from your country and my pictures from Bulgaria which it took me two years to paint. Paintings filled with music, mystery, silence and energy. I sensed that the Bulgarian people had embarked on a new road, a road of revival, reaching up to the light like a spring tree in blossom.”

Elisabeth Calmes is currently taking part in an exhibition in Huston, Texas. She is proud to say that the first one of her paintings to have been bought was a two-meter picture from Bulgaria.

At the Salon of Arts Tsvetan Dobrev is presenting choir singers from the four mixed choirs he is conductor of in Paris with a concert “Bulgarian Resonance in Paris.” Tsvetan Dobrev emigrated 27 years ago. At the time he was a prominent avant-garde composer, but in France he gave up any Western influences and turned entirely to Bulgarian music. What provoked him to take part in this year’s Salon of Arts?

“Three years ago I came to Bulgaria with 120 French choir singers and we had concerts across the country. That was when one of my choir singers, renowned French artist Elisabeth Calmes got so impressed by the beauty of Bulgaria that she painted 76 pictures, many of which later left the bounds of France. Her exhibition in Paris “Variations on a Bulgarian theme” was a resounding success. I wanted to bring the exhibition to Sofia for Bulgarians to enjoy. I brought several singers from the choirs I conduct to Sofia. The programme we shall present will comprise six Bulgarian and six French songs. My choir singers are great admirers of Bulgarian music but that cost me 27 years of work. They find Bulgarian folklore difficult and I had to find a way to lead them to new aesthetic parameters and that takes time. But I can proudly say that the people around me – 5-6,000 people – students, choir singers all came to love this style that is so alien to them,” said Tsvetan Dobrev and added that some of his best years in Bulgaria professionally were the years he worked at the Bulgarian National Radio.

English version: Milena Daynova