Marking the 100 birth anniversary of the artist LILY VERMUT
2024.04.04
9 April 2024, 6:00 pm
Academia Gallery, 1 Shipka Street, Sofia
In 2024, we celebrate the 100th bith anniversary of the artist LILY VERMUT (1924–2014). The celebratory event will take place with the participation of Prof. Georgi Kapriev, PhD, Assoc. Prof. Boyka Donevska, PhD, Mihaela Padeva, and Natasha Noeva, PhD. The audience can see some of Lily Vermut's works and the impressionistic film Gift of the director Toma Vasharov.
Lily Vermut was born on 5 April 1924 in Sofia to the actor Todor Yordanov, one of the founders of Ivan Vazov National Theatre, and writer Lyuba Prodanova. On her mother's side, she is the great-granddaughter of the artist Dimitar Dobrovich.
In 1948, Vermut graduated with honours, with a degree in Painting in the atelier of Prof. Dechko Uzunov at the Art Academy. She had a marked success in the field of portraiture and landscape, with some of her student landscapes being bought by foreign embassies in Sofia. At the time of the so-called "socialist realism" she sought free creative expression in the field of decorative arts. She was one of the founders of the "Textiles" section of the Union of Bulgarian Artists.
Lily Vermut held the first independent textile art exhibition in Bulgaria in 1963, which had a strong impact on the development of the textile genre. She created a completely new artistic style and image world related to history, mythology, archeology, which aroused great interest both in the of art and in industrycircles, and hundreds of her projects were realised. In 1997, she held an exhibition in Paphos, Cyprus, and two solo exhibitions in Sofia – "Despite" (2001) and "Without Railway Tracks" (2004). She participated in all textile art exhibitions of the Union of Bulgarian Artists in Sofia and other cities in Bulgaria, representative exhibitions in New York, Tokyo, Moscow, Berlin, The Hague, Warsaw, Copenhagen, and others.
In 2005, the Union of Bulgarian Artists organised the exhibition The Forgotten Creators of Academic Education in Bulgaria, dedicated to the founders of academic arts education, with a very wide response among the cultural community and the media. Her iconic works are property of the National Art Gallery, various state institutions, private collections in Tokyo, Berlin, Moscow, Paris, Milan, New York, Istanbul, London, Cyprus, and othres.
She is the author of the autobiographical book "On the Road Ahead of Us", and of more than a hundred articles on art issues and various current cultural, social and political problems, which she addressed with a keen sense of responsibility. Some of them are included in the collection "Resonances" published posthumously in 2015. Her last book–"From Parnassus Downwards"–remained unfinished at the end of her life on 17 June 2014.
She is holder of the order "Cyril and Methodius", Golden Feather Award, and Golden Age seal of Simeon the Great – the highest award of the Ministry of Culture.
Films about Lily Vermut
Television documentary Painting and Poetry in Textiles of Elena Dimitrova (multiple broadcasts under the title "Deserved Recognition")
Short impressionistic film Gift (2008) of director Toma Vasharov