“Give Me Walls!” Impact of the French Artistic Experience on Mural Arts in Bulgaria in the 1960s and Early 1970s

After the devastation caused by the Second World War, in Bulgaria and elsewhere in Europe, the new construction of public architectural sites opened up a wide field for artistic integration (murals, mosaics, relief compositions of different materials, etc.). In Bulgaria, architects and artists carried out their projects under a communist rule and a centralized state system of commissioning. East of the Iron Curtain, the positive official attitude towards French leftist artists of various ideological wings (like Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, Jean Lurçat, Robert Delaunay, etc.), was motivated by their association with the anti-fascist resistance and, in some cases, with the Soviet Union, even though specific works and periods of the same artists were dismissed as formalist. The article discusses the recognition of the work of French mural artists on the part of the post-war generation of monumentalists in Bulgaria, including Yoan Leviev, Georgi Bozhilov – Slona (the Elephant), Dimitar Kirov, and others. The focus is on Henri Matisse and Fernand Léger.