Two who died too young

Two wonderful exhibitions – first the Sofia City Gallery’s one of Jules Pascin’s amusing erotic drawings from 100 years ago.

I wrote about Pascin last October - referring to a dedicated website  and a blogpost about his oil portraits, The gallery's coverage says - Julius Mordecai Pincas, known as Jules Pascin, was born on 31 March, 1885 in the city of Vidin. In 1892, his family moved to Bucharest. Pascin graduated from high school in Vienna. Between 1902 and 1905 he received training at the art academies in Vienna, Budapest, Munich and Berlin. He contributed to the “Simplicissimus “ magazine published in Munich. In 1905, he moved to Paris, where he met his future wife, Hermine David. In 1907, he organized his first solo exhibition at Paul Cassirer’s gallery in Berlin. In 1914 he left for New York, where he lived until 1920. He travelled to the Southern states and Cuba. Then he went back to Paris, where he lived until his death in 1930. Pascin reflected in his paintings the influence of Art Noveau, and later – of expressionism. The exhibition includes artworks belonging to all major themes and genres but particularly the nude body,

There is an exhibition catalogue in Bulgarian and French, including all artworks featured in the exhibition. The research paper “Jules Pascin and Artistic Developments at the Turn of the 20th Century”, compiled by the exhibition’s curator Maria Vassileva is also available (again in Bulgarian and French) as a separate edition.

I then paid a visit to the School of Art in Vassil Levsky Boulevard – and was very touched to view a small exhibition of the aquarelles of a young man - Margarit Tsanev - who committed suicide in 1969 at the age of only 25. 
The curator told me that they had been found only in the 1980s (?) and donated to the School - which exhibits them annually on a rotating basis. Pity the exhibition ends tomorrow!