Meet Atanas Tashev
Artist, born by the sea in 1958, father of Ellie and Vessy
Bold Colours & Distinct Shapes
There’s rarely work that stands out with so much embedded courage and vulnerability. It challenges the senses but also our reality. Sometimes that’s the aesthetics of our surrounding. And sometimes that’s the socio-cultural environment we live in.
Private Collections and Galleries around the world
Works of Atanas Tashev are owned by the National Art Gallery in Sofia, Bulgaria and other art galleries in Bulgaria, as well as by private collections in Germany, Switzerland, Spain, France, Great Britain, Republic of Korea, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Austria, USA and others.
Recognitions
Atanas Tashev has been recognised across Europe and has exhibited in Belgium, Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, and Macedonia.
Below you can find a small selection of Atanas Tashev’s work and some of his collections. Make an inquire to see more remotely or in-person.
“Objects & Allegories” Collection
The Levers
““What Happened” was the name of an exhibition from the Painting section of the Union of Bulgarian Artists, 2014, which was intended to provoke social activity. Atanas Tashev surprised the jury, his colleagues, the audience with a sharp turn in his artistic direction, showing the sharp and problematic composition “Foosball”, in which he unequivocally sought social and political associations.
What happened to Tashev’s approach to painting? We all know about his extraordinary artistic gift, which for years has been manifested and proved in a neo-impression - bright, colorful, aesthetized painting opus that defined him in the convention of “good” painting. With maturity, his social and creative insight, his moral and artistic reflectiveness, they are provoked by what is happening in the socio-cultural situation in Bulgaria and abroad and motivate him creatively in seeking to meet the challenges of modern times. Today Atanas Tashev’s paintings sound sharp, polemical, active, contemporary. His picturesque skills, sense of color and compositional rhythm are a legacy of professional experience, but now used differently. The world view has changed, the understanding of the purposes and tasks of art has changed. The motive is no longer an occasion for a colorful impression, instead, it unlocks associations, makes connections and generalizations about our existential and socio-political life. Through the silhouettes of a postindustrial technological being, the invisible dimensions of social - psychological tensions, dependencies, power plays and manipulative relationships are revealed.
Levers, turbines, motor parts, pistons, cylinders, mechanized milking production lines, a crashed car, a landing or taking off plane - the monuments of the technological revolution with which we have plagued our existence - these are the object of his observation and artistic reaction. The presence of the technical in the paintings of Atanas Tashev makes the recurrences of our machine-mediated life visible, life that feels cold and dehumanizing,
relations are reduced to power dependencies, to the feeling that someone holds and pulls the levers, that someone decides for us and we are a victim of someone else’s will. The importance of these phenomena, Atanas will call “allegories”. Allegories of a dehumanized and burdened living. In the ruins of technocratic civilization, the artist’s moral sensitivity reveals the remains of the scattered truth about the human.
As the last abode of spiritual flesh, contrabasses, cello and their black, velvet covers lay down. Their silence hides the remnants of a romantic understanding of art as a way and salvation.
The monumental stagnation of these fearsome tools, machinations, objects - allegories, awaken our will to break the stiff determination of a doomed, situational, dehumanized existence. This is the creative and personal pathos in the art of Atanas Tashev, his creative rebellion.”
The Colourful & Bright Opus
The Sea
The Carnivals
The Gardens
Upcoming Exhibition in September, 2022
Details coming soon!
About Atanas Tashev
RECOGNITIONS in France & Bulgaria
2020 - Finalist at the Cité Internationale des Arts - Paris, France, 2020
2019 - Shortlisted for the Cité Internationale des Arts - Paris, France
2018 - Nomination for the National fine arts award “Vladimir Dimitrov - the Master”
2015 - 2018 - Nomination for participation in the closing exhibitions of “The National
2017 - 2018 - Competition by Allianz Bulgaria for fine arts, graphics, and sculpture”
1995 – Prize on general exhibition “Bulgarian Landscape”
EXHIBITING across EUROPE since 1984
Art colonies, solo and group exhibitions in Belgium, Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, Macedonia & more
2018 - “Raiko Aleksiev” Gallery, Sofia - "Objects & Allegories" exhibition, Bulgaria
2016 - Ilindentsi - Spring art cology organizied together with the Union of the Artists in Bulgaria and the “Art center Ilindentsi” foundation
2014 - Vienna, Bulgarian culture institute “Wittgenstein House”, participation in the exhibition “The secret gardens of..”
2012 - “Alterego” Gallery, Sofia, Bulgaria
2012 - “Fun House The Clock”Venue, Sofia - “My Gardens” exhibition
2010 – 47th International Fine Arts Colony – Strumitsa, Macedonia
2010 – International Fine Arts Colony – Struga, Macedonia
2009 – Brussels, Permanent Representation of the Republic of Bulgaria to the European Union, participation in “Layers” Exhibition
2005 – “Minerva” Gallery at Grand Hotel Sofia, Sofia, Bulgaria
2003 - Stuttgart, Germany, participation in “Color, Expression, Poetry” Exhibition
2003 – “6 Shipka Str.” Gallery, Sofia - “Exotic” exhibition, Bulgaria
2003 – “Burgas” Gallery, Burgas
1999 – Solo Exhibition, part of the National Autumn Exhibitions, Plovdiv, Bulgaria
1999 – “Irina” Gallery, Sofia - “The Lost Paradise” exhibition
1998 – “Finesse” Gallery, Sofia
1997 – “Ata-Ray” Gallery at Sheraton Sofia Hotel Balkan, Sofia, Bulgaria
1996 – “Janet” Gallery, Plovdiv, Bulgaria
1996 – “Art 36” Gallery, Sofia, Bulgaria
1996 - Sofia, Participation in International Triennial of Painting
1995 – “Ata-Ray” Gallery at Sheraton Sofia Hotel Balkan, Sofia, Bulgaria
1994 – “Apollo & Mercury” Gallery at 6 Shipka Str., Sofia, Bulgaria
1989 – International Fine Arts Colony –Sozopol, Bulgaria
1986 – “108 Rakovski Str.” Gallery, Sofia, Bulgaria
Since 1984 - Participations in various group exhibitions and national art exhibitions, Bulgaria
EDUCATION
Atanas and his wife Vera enjoying a hike in Bulgaria
1979 - 1985 – National Academy of Fine Arts, Sofia, Bulgaria
Master’s and Bachelor’s Dimploma of Fine Arts, Painting in the class of prof. Ivan Kirkov, the internationally recognised painter and illustrator.
1973 - 1977 – High School of Fine Arts, Sofia, Bulgaria
MEMBERSHIPS
Member of the Union of Bulgarian Artists
