DIMITAR YARANOV (1964–2024)
10–22 September 2025
Opening: 10 September 2025 (Wednesday), 6:00 pm
Academia Gallery, 1 Shipka Street, Sofia
Dimitar Yaranov was born in 1964 in Sofia (Bulgaria) and passed away 60 years later. He graduated from the High School of Art in 1983 and from the National Academy of Art in 1991 with a degree in Painting. Yaranov created the legendary art shop Kotka & Kotka and was a teacher at Iliya Petrov National High School of Fine Arts, Sofia.
The Academia Gallery at the National Academy of Art is presenting mainly paintings and drawings. The exhibition is displayed chronologically – from high school drawings to his last, probably unfinished canvases.
Dimitar Yaranov is known to the public primarily for his paintings. His individual figurative language has its а history of its own, connected with the previous generation and specifically with his father Atanas Yaranov. But the main line leads in the 1990s to the XXL group, where the question of the relationship between painting and the photographic image was clearly and consistently raised.
His canvases are filled with utopian machines, oil rigs or space platforms, monkeys and dogs in spacesuits. The plots look futuristic-technological, but permeated by melancholy and a sense of doom. The artist defines this approach as conceptual-documentary, being based on photographs from the print media. It is precisely because of this clear strategy that his role in laying the foundations of conceptual painting in Bulgaria can be pointed out.
Dimitar Yaranov's artistic work was highly appreciated long before his untimely death and its significance is beyond doubt. His works are property of numerous museums and private collections.
The exhibition in itself is not an assertion of showing the artist's creative legacy in its entirety; however, we remain hopeful that a retrospective exhibition will soon be organised to reveal how significant are the paintings of our unforgettable colleague and friend Dimitar Yaranov.
The exposition includes paintings and drawings from the collections of Ognyan Delibozov, Nikolay Nedelchev, Marius Velichkov and the artist's sister – Iva Yaranova, also works owned by the Iliya Petrov National High School of Fine Arts and ONE Gallery.
Exhibition curators
Svilen Stefanov, Suzana Nikolova, Rossen Toshev
Gallery
