Vaska Emanouilova Gallery

Overview

Vaska Emanouilova Gallery is a museum that stores, displays, and studies the work of the Bulgarian sculptress as part of Bulgarian history and culture. Striving to implement a dialogue between the generations, the gallery is also an exhibition space for modern art and young artists, which hosts various art events and initiatives.

Vaska Emanouilova is known to be "the gentle face of Bulgarian sculpture" (Irena Petrova, Bulgarka magazine, 2018). Born in 1905, she quickly navigates her desires and finds her calling - to create. In 1927 she graduated from the State Academy of Art. Since she does not have her own studio, Marin Vassilev gives her one of her own at the academy. In addition to sculpture, Vaska is engaged in painting and immediately after graduation is already participating in exhibitions of women artists.

Vaska Emanuilova is not limited to just one genre, style, and material to work with. She uses equally skillfully plaster, bronze, and clay to sculpt figures in the fields of small plastic, bare body, historical and everyday composition, and portrait. Particularly strongly influenced by her work is her three-month residency in Paris, in 1939. 

In 1985, apparently anticipating her end, Vaska donates to Sofia City Art Gallery 90 of her sculptures, 48 watercolors, and 35 drawings. She leaves this world several months later, but her art remains, and after her death, the gallery opens a permanent exhibit with her works. However, political changes soon followed and the gallery closed for 12 years. It was not until 2006 that it was reopened and was named "Vaska Emanuilova". In addition, her works are stored in the National Art Gallery and those in Plovdiv, Ruse, Varna, Burgas, Dobrich, and in private collections in the country and around the world.

Since its opening in 2006, Vaska Emanouilova Gallery has been operating as a space combining the functions of a museum and an art gallery.