ARTIST AND LETTER
2026.05.19
Exhibition by lecturers from the Department of Book, Illustration, Printed Graphics at the National Academy of Art
20 May – 10 June 2026
Exhibition opening: 20 May 2026 (Wednesday), 6:30 pm
Petko Zadgorski Art Gallery, Burgas
24 Mitropolit Simeon Street, Burgas 8000
The ARTIST AND LETTER exhibition presents works by lecturers from the Department of Book, Illustration, Printed Graphics at the National Academy of Art. Outside the usual practice in which book artists use typography to visualise the author's text or as an expressive means for the needs of graphic design, Iliya Gruev, Regina Dalkalacheva, Krassimir Andreev, Kapka Kaneva, Boyana Pavlova, Emil Markov and Dora Ivanova show works free from any utilitarianism.
The artists have transformed the Cyrillic letter from a means into the sole purpose of their expression. The result is a diverse and exciting collection of calligraphies, typographies, font drawings, art books, light installations.
ARTIST AND LETTER is a stage of a two-year scientific and creative project of the Department, dedicated to the Cyrillic alphabet. So far, joint exhibitions of team representatives have been held at the Bulgarian Cultural Institute in Bratislava (2025) and Academia Gallery of the National Academy of Art (14–30 May 2026). The presented collections of artworks change and are updated with every following initiative.
About the artists
Iliya Gruev (b. 1976, Sofia, Bulgaria), as an author of font systems dedicates his creative talent to the letter. He defended a dissertation on the problems of the font, and subsequently became a leading lecturer in this discipline. He participates in the exhibition with a collection of humorously provocative posters in which he plays with the possibilities of letters to express through depiction, while using entirely original typography.
Regina Dalkalacheva (b. 1964, Sofia, Bulgaria) works in the field of art books, drawing, digital graphics and calligraphy. A long-time leading lecturer in Illustration, she is interested in the possibilities of experimental book forms that are not tied to the market, in which she feels most free as an artist. She presents works from the PostScriptum series–a curious amalgam of highly transformed typographic signs and digitally manipulated drawings that the viewer can only perceive as a single whole.
Krassimir Andreev (b. 1959, Pernik, Bulgaria) is a true master of calligraphy and type, with world-class experience in the field of graphic design and logo design. A lacturer of Type and Calligraphy, Andreev is completely at his own feet in this creative initiative. He shows a series of sensual graphic works in which he overlays his handwriting on characters from authorship fonts he has worked on.
Kapka Kaneva (b. 1978, Sofia, Bulgaria) is active in the field of paper sculpture. As a teacher, she is excited by the possibilities of spatial children's books to generate interest and an attitude towards reading. She designs illustrations and book covers for Bulgarian and foreign publishers, always trusting her favourite material. In the exhibition, she presents variants of paper titles developed by her, experienced alternatively with the help of lighting and the lart book light installation "Forest".
Boyana Pavlova (b. 1990, Sofia, Bulgaria) has dedicated her research and creativity to the book art and the graphic design. Key to her work are the expressive potential of typography and unconventional approaches in the text composition, which add meaning and significance. In this format, she surprises us with an authorship typographic interpretation of texts by the great Jorge Luis Borges.
Emil Markov (b. 1960, Burgas, Bulgaria) has worked in practically all visual and design book dimensions. Illustrator, applied graphics artist, engineer of plastic book constructions, long-time art director of the Spanish publishing house Oxford University Press, he is the soul and heart of the Department of Book, Illustration, Printed Graphics at the branch of the National Academy of Art in the city of Burgas. He shows a cycle of calligraphies dedicated to the Cyrillic letter Ъ ъ (еr golyam).
Dora P Ivanova (b. 1990, Sofia, Bulgaria) creates illustrations mainly in the spheres of classical and of contemporary literature for adults. She graduated with a degree in Graphic Design from Teesside University in Prague and a Master's degree in Illustration from the National Academy of Art in Sofia. She has a soft spot for the collage technique and the alternative spaces and materialities of the book, to which she dedicated her doctoratoral thesis. The diptych "Passéism", with which Dora is presented in the exhibition, was also realised on the principle of collage.