Foundation "Support for the Art in Bulgaria" Virtual Museum Boris Denev and Slavka Deneva

In 1983, just before her death, Slavka Deneva donate to the Union of Bulgarian Artists her family home at Shipka 18 Str. and all the movable and immovable property in it including a priceless by its artistic value collection of more than 900 paintings and 7000 drawings and sketches of Boris Denev and Slavka Deneva. From 1984 to 1993 the donated works are given to the National Art Gallery to be temporary preserved. From 1994 the Board of Managers of the Union commit the works to be managed and preserved by the "Support for the Art in Bulgaria" Fund which heir today is the Foundation "Support for the Art in Bulgaria". 

Unfortunately when the collection returned from the National Gallery they found that not a small part of the works needs restoration.  The reasons are different: unsuitable conditions of preservation during the years, the specific drawing technique used by the artists, the quality of the colors and the materials and etc.

At the initiative of the chairman of the fund – the artist Georgi Trifonov, during the period 1994 – 1997 step by step there were restored more than 300 paintings. There were also announced a scholarship for student from the National Academy of Arts, „Restoration” specialty that is financed by the Fund.

In 2009 the UBA signs a long term agreement with the National Academy of Arts for a joined activity. Until now students from „Conservation and restoration“ specialty in the class of Accos. Prof. Stefan Belishky is restored 62 works with very considerable damagesas a part of their education and under the methodical leadership of their teachers. The finances for materials are also provided. Thus the young specialists have the possibility to apply on practice their theoretical knowledge when they resolve real restoration problems and the collection enriches with works with a great artistic value.

NOTES ON SLAVKA DENEVA’S TECHNIQUE

In the process of restoration of paintings by Slavka Deneva, a number of interesting issues arise, that are the result of both this artist’s unconventional technique and of the poor conditions a good number of her paintings were kept in over the years. Most often, separation of the paints from the color base and the primer is observed, due to the mixing of chemically incompatible materials. Restoration of the bond between the discrete layers is a slow and delicate operation of plasticizing and gluingsince the airpockets are hard and  break easily. In Self-Portrait (inventory No 16 of the donation she made to  the UBA), three stages of composition are visible. The face has been initiated (and almost finished) in a magnificent color scheme. Later on however, Slavka Deneva changed the picture entirely, covering the larger part of it in a brownish hue. This new modeling too though was left unfinished and parts of the earlier layer are visible. The poor adhesion between the two layers of the painting have caused damage and peeling. On the back of the same painting there is a third self-portrait, again unfinished, and implemented in a totally different manner – in flat spots of pastel colors.

While adding the preparatory sketch to the unfinished composition of an interior with figures (inventory No 217), the artist used soft crayon and pencil, which show instability when attempting to clean the surface impurities by the usual chemical solvents. Preserving this drawing which takes up more than one half of the canvas is important because of the originality of the material and also because it allows to follow the stages in the composing of the picture.

The story of Study of a Nude Body is interesting (inventory No 36). Slavka Deneva used the back of a Veliko Tarnovo landscape painted by Boris Denev. Three stages of transformation in this painting can be observed. The first stage is the Veliko Tarnovo landscape, implemented in the typical Boris Denev  high impasto brushwork, combined with spatulas. The entire face of the painting is very dynamic and rich in relief and is wonderfully preserved. The second stage includes Slavka Deneva’s removing of the canvas from the under-frame and mounting it again with the painted layer to the back. Then she primed the reverse side and used it to paint a nude body, which, however, she left unfinished. The third stage followed: obviously losing interest in the nude body, the artist began a still-life, again on the back of the painting, i.e., on top of Boris Denev’s landscape. This image is sketchy and spreads only on the parts of the landscape that were not covered under the frame. 

It is difficult to explain such an impulse in Slavka Deneva. It seems that the last still-life, which is in fact technologically closer to completion, was the result of some transient urge, and not of some serious artistic attempt. As a result, the  “back” is now a palimpsest in which, however, neither Boris Denev’s landscape could possible be perceived as a work of art (it is hidden for the most part), nor Slavka Deneva’s painting could pass for a completed work. The color palettes and techniques of the landscape and the still-life are very different. Naturally, in cases like this one we would ask ourselves whether it is at all possible to separate the two or even the three superimposed pictures, including the sketch. Unfortunately, modern restoration technology is still unable to propose an appropriate solution. The difficulty comes from the fact that there is no layer of primer or varnish between Boris Denev’s landscape and Slavka Deneva’s still-life to allow the separation of the two layers of painting. And, even if there were, no technique exists to date that would allow to preserve the complex relief of the still-life which fully follows the texture of Boris Denev’s painting. Such a transfer would result in a flat image fully devoid of the existing relief of the work. 

In cases like this one, restorers face the ethical issue of whether they may or should destroy one layer in order to reveal what is hidden beneath. Is the aesthetic, historic or documentary value of the earlier work greater? Does the later work have artistic merits that deserve to be preserved and that would allow the viewer to perceive it as a serious, complete work of art? Should we qualify as vandalism the act of the later painting covering quite unscrupulously the work by a great and established name in art? The answers to these questions are not always easy to provide and sometimes a lot of time is needed in order to critically assess all “pros” and “cons”, prior to arriving at a categorical decision. 

In the process of restoring of Slavka Deneva’s works leading to her anniversary exhibition at the Union of Bulgarian Artists in 2010, four cases were found of her having painted on the reverse side of Boris Denev’s paintings. These are in good condition and one could hardly question their artistic quality. On three of them the artist’s signature has been preserved. Nevertheless they were partially or fully primed before Slavka Deneva used them again. A stylistic analysis indicates that these were painted in the 1960’s. This further complicates our hypothesizing because Beris Denev died in 1969. Is it possible that he himself allowed his daughter – due to lack of funds for new canvas, for instance – to paint on his own paintings? We shall never find out…

Stefan Belishky

Notes on the technique and technology of the Boris Denev’s paintings

The painting technique of Boris Denev is not so far experimental as those of Slavka Deneva. His paintings are close to the classical construction. He use linen canvas but canvases with mixed structure aren’t exception too (for example Self-portrait with a cigar, Inv. No 121). The massiveness of the canvases’ fibers is different. A special feature found in a few of his paintings is the usage of narrow canvas: for example in the painting Lady’s portrait, Inv. No II 14 the width of the tissue is only 70 cm. These kinds of canvases that are double less narrow than the real sizes are seen in other of Denev’s paintings. In these cases the artist uses the whole width until the еnd of the tissue. This kind of canvas is rarely presented in the art of the Bulgarian artists. Among the works restored in Restoration Department in the National Art Academy this tendency is documented in some works from the period in the 30s from the 20th century (for example in the Ivan Lazarenko’s painting Presentation of the blessed virgin, 1934). The primer of Boris Denev is dense but thin. The structure often vary considerably and the different paintings there can be noticed smooth primers with yellow shade acquired with the time that demonstrate character of emulsion primers (ex. Winter march Inv. No N2(1), but also whither and porous primers on which the surface sometimes can be seen even the traces of the brush with which they are laid on. (ex. in Landscape in Veliko Tarnovo, Lady’s portrait, Inv. No II 14, painting with Inv. No II 107, Self-portrait with cigar, Inv. No 121 and others). In the paintings, restored in the National Art Academy, Denev was primed the canvases by himself. Sometimes he primed bigger formats and then cut the canvas and stretched it on smaller sub frames. (ex. painting with Inv. No II 107). Nevertheless that his style of painting is characteristic and distinguish, his technique with the colors is very diverse: we can see dense and finely laid layers with delicate nuances (as in the composition Winter march), dynamic brush strokes with high impasto, combined with light dry brushes through which the primer is transparent and participate in the coloristic development of the painting (as in the lady’s portrait with Inv. No II 14, Landscape – that is actually the back side of Slavka Deneva’s painting, and many others), bravely modeling and mixing of the colors with pallet in big colorful stains as in the landscape Sozopol with Inv. No 10 II, Landscape from Veliko Tarnovo and others. The restoration problems while working on the Boris Denev’s paintings in the National Art Academy are divers. They are due to the unsuitable conditions of preservation, but there are also some that are due to the working technique of the artists. Though rarely the artists used the back side of the paintings for other works (ex. Non-finished portrait of Slavka Deneva/Landscape, inv. No 43). The other side (the older one) was often painted over (such as in the one with Inv. No 43). There are many cases in which on the back of his paintings his daughter Slavka Deneva painted too.

Stefan Belishky

restoration of paintings - Boris Denev

restoration of paintings - Slavka Deneva