[caption id="attachment_593" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="National Gallery of Foreign Art Sofia "]<img class="size-full wp-image-593" title="Art Gallery " src="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/dsc05340.jpg" alt="National Gallery of Foreign Art Sofia " width="500" height="666" />[/caption]

There's a Picasso Exhibit open right now at the <a href="http://www.foreignartmuseum.bg/en/index.html" target="_blank">National Gallery of Foreign Art in Sofia</a>.  It's called: "АЗ НЕ ТЪРСЯ. АЗ НАМИРАМ: ПАБЛО ПИКАСО" or in English: "I do not seek. I find. Pablo Picasso."

The exhibit opened in December and a Bulgaria told me recently that they'd read the exhibit had already attracted 20,000 visitors.  These are apparently impressive numbers. I don't know if these are impressive numbers in a Bulgarian museum/gallery or if these are impressive numbers for a museum in general but I figured that I should visit and check out what the buzz was about.

The museum website is in both Bulgarian and English and is pretty user friendly.  This seemed to be an auspicious start to this adventure.  Also interesting is the fact that the cost of admission is 4 leva/2 leva for students and your ticket is good for two visits within a month.  Oh and the gallery is free on Mondays but I was going with my <a href="http://backinbulgaria.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Walla Walla friend Matt</a> and this was his last weekend in Sofia so we thought it would be better to go on a Sunday.

Just to be up front, I like Picasso.  I think that it take a special kind of person to work at the edge of his field, to push innovation, to face criticism by many in you field and to eventually change the field you work in--and Picasso is one of those of people.  This is of course my own short summary of Picasso's career but it's been heavily influenced by Howard Gardner's book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Creating-Minds-Creativity-Einstein-Stravinsky/dp/0465014542">Creating Minds</a>.

This said, I was little disappointed with the Picasso exhibit.  <!--more-->It was good.  The engravings are amazing. But don't go expecting to see any serious paintings.  The National Gallery's website says that you get to see a mixture of Picasso's <a href="http://www.foreignartmuseum.bg/en/archive/temporary_exhibition.html" target="_blank">paintings, engravings, ceramics and photos </a>of Picasso by his friends but in practice the paintings in this exhibit are hum-drum.  They are not as complex or detailed as his blue or rose periods or his cubist pieces for example <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Demoiselles_d%27Avignon" target="_blank">Les Demoiselles d'Avignon</a>.  Rather, the paintings at the Sofia exhibit are not done on canvas.  I would describe them as mixed media pieces.  They have some paint but also pencil and rather than canvas Picasso uses cardboard as his "canvas."

Still, I think the exhibit is worth visiting but I think it's misleading to say that you get to see Picasso as "a painter."  What I found much more interesting were the engravings--or lithographs--these pieces are bold and through them you get a sense of Picasso's eye and his development as an artist.  I could see from each "series" on display how lines and forms change.  Using the same model or models from piece to piece it's almost as if Picasso is showing how he sees the world. You see the same female body and face move from round and feminine to angular and distorted from piece to piece in one case in a six month period and in another over about four years.

The pottery wasn't breath taking but in looking at in relationship to the rest of the exhibit you get the sense of how active Picasso's mind was.  He was constantly creating.  There's a wonderful plate with a simple colorful rooster on it and when I saw it I thought, I'd like a whole set of china designed by Picasso.  That's a thought I never imagined I would have.  Picasso was clearly not a commercial artist but even in a simple plate you can see that Picasso understands space, proportion and color.

The exhibit took about an hour to see.  All of the individual pieces were labeled in both Bulgarian and in English but the prose on the walls about Picasso as a painter, engraver, ceramicist and Picasso's life were only in Bulgarian.  This makes the exhibit much less accessible if you only speak English.  It's really a shame that the exhibit didn't also have the prose in English.  Frankly, I can understand why the permanent exhibits in the gallery don't have introductions in English but it seems a missed opportunity not to have English in this temporary exhibit.

In conclusion, I think that the exhibit is worth seeing but you should know that the National Gallery of Foreign Art is not up to the standards of other European museums.  As long as you know this, I don't think you'll be disappointed; in fact, I hope that you'll be surprised because really there is a gem hidden away in this rather antiquated gallery.