Bulgarian Artists - Vladimir Dimitrov - The Master / Владимир Димитров - Майстора (1882-1960)

Vladimir Dimitrov - The Master (Владимир Димитров - Майстора) was a Bulgarian painter, draughtsman and teacher. He is considered one of the leading Bulgarian artists of the 20th century. From a poor family, he left school at an early age and worked at various jobs before becoming a clerk (1898–1903) at the Kyustendil District Court, where he drew portraits of its employees. In 1903 he entered the School of Drawing in Sofia and, while there, began to be called ‘Maistora’ (‘Master’), a respectful title in acknowledgement of his talent. He served as a painter for the Bulgarian army during the Balkan Wars (1912–13) and World War I, executing landscapes and genre paintings such as A Rest from the March (1917). He later taught and travelled, visiting Rome in 1922, where he met the American collector John Crane who bought his entire stock of paintings and signed a four-year contract with him for production of his work. Maistora returned to Bulgaria and for more than 20 years lived in the village of Shishkovci, near Kyustendil, from there sending all of his paintings to the Ministry of Education. He drew and painted exclusively portraits and self-portraits, employing pencil, oil, India ink or watercolour (Portrait of N. Checklarov, 1910; Self-portrait, 1913). His work is a combination of the traditions of Bulgarian folk art and Post-Impressionism; from the latter he developed the use of clean colours, an expressive deformation of nature and a contrast of warm and cool tones in the modelling. His models, agricultural workers and pretty village women, are usually placed in static and frontal poses close to the picture plane and are framed behind by decorative friezes of fruit and flowers (Bulgarian Madonna, c. 1932; Women Reapers from Shishkovci, c. 1935). In 1982 UNESCO celebrated the 100th anniversary of his birth. There is a Dimitrov-Maistora Museum in Kyustendil.

Music: Pancho Vladigerov - Improvisation for Piano