From our very early childhood Borian’s talent impressed everybody around - the young and adults. Wherever we went he found the occasion to draw. Even on the beach - he would use the sand, in a restaurant - would take a napkin from the table and draw on top of it, if solving equations in mathematics - would paint something small near the answer. Borian made pictures with such ease and verve, with such imagination that no one - in the family or at school, had doubts that he will become an artist. He received the highest recognition by the drawing teachers at the National Secondary School of Fine Art. They were all impressed by him. When he was admitted to a private college in London, he received a full scholarship and went on to study there. Later I had the chance to go to England as well and helped him in organizing his first exhibitions. In London he made several successful art shows, one was in the gallery “Sofia” at the Bulgarian Embassy in the UK. The President Petar Stoyanov visited the exhibition and congratulated him together with the Ambassador Valentin Dobrev, and the cultural attache Aglika Markova.

K.L.
Fragment from the Book

Creativity, this blessed work

          Little by little the myth of the School of Gorna Banya, which floats here and there, is starting to look more transparent. What wrong is seen by some people  in the fact that within the country there is a specialized school where admission is offered to children who show evidence of faster development and diverse creativity from early age? Have we not paid enough for the pedagogical credulity that every single student has an unlimited opportunity to develop? Precisely  this misunderstanding has the character of myth, violating the natural talents with which a child comes to the white world ...

...Look at the pictures of the small Borian. He is only nine years old ... Notice the dynamics of human figures, the precise stroke, thrifty means ... fantasy ... "He not only was born artist, but an impressive mathematician, in the full sense of the words is an all-gifted child" - these are the words of his class leader Maria Klisarska, who saw the unique in this romping, but very bright boy ...

Snejina Guturanova
"Shared"       

Fragment from the Book

About Borian Lazarov - Introduction

          I met Boryan Lazarov in 2002 on his significant exhibition at "Gallery of Bulgarian contemporary art" - K2 Art Gallery. Entering the gallery, even on “prima vista”, I was overcome by the feeling of meeting an authentic artist with a characteristic, unknown to the public technical approach. My awaken interest in an undeniable pictorial talent led me to the following exhibitions of Boryan Lazarov in 2002, 2004 and 2005 in the prestigious "Solers" gallery of Sofia. And again, I realized that this is an evolving art with permanent signs from the cosmic spirit of our times.

          To the modern nowadays process of devaluation of art Boryan Lazarov responds with adherence to the pictorial qualities in his paintings without making them predominate, or compensate the content and included ideas. Facing the example of the great - Picasso, Dali, Henry Moore, Dimitar Kazakov ... Lazarov remains constantly resistant to introduced languages ​​in the art. The abstract in his paintings, enhanced in varying degree, is perceived also as a protest against any restriction of formal and substantive nature. I bless the young artist’s piety towards new and new pictorial forms, and I am deeply convinced that this is an artist with sharp sensory sensitivity, a pronounced artist  with future.

          The reading of the values in a number of Boryan Lazarov’s exhibitions is an excellent area for a specific discourse, where different truths are meeting - the relationship between traditional and modern, the artistic measure in the introduction of mythological and nostalgic suggestions, the relationship between fiction and reality. The interpretive artistic impulse of Boryan Lazarov sets his art high above the trivial. I am confident in his intellectual identification, professional skill and daring, in his incomparable hand and artistic elevation, in his devotion to art.

005, 22nd January
Kiril Georgiev Popov
Fragment from the Book

Mountain House

          Bistritza village - a small green oasis ..., an attractive place that I relate to my closest and loved people. This is the small summer house, where we meet ourselves away from the noisy city. Here in Bistritza, each of us finds their calm, quiet place where one can listen to music, read a favorite book, or enjoy the sunshine and the coolness during the hot summer days. This small house keeps the  memories of our childhood. I love this place, I love these scenes...

K.L.
Fragment from the Book

Continuing Shapkarev’s kin

    Artistic searches, thematic focus and emotional intensity of Borian‘s art are inevitably influenced through the artist’s particular esteem by the life and work of his grandparents Kuzman /father/ and Kliment /son/ - Shapkarev. The Bulgarian national revival trace left by them in our history has a direct influence on his work.

          Who are they both? Kuzman Shapkarev, son of poor parents, after educating himself hardly and persistently, devotes himself with Renaissance passion to the struggle for recognition and affirmation of the Bulgarian nation in the Ottoman Empire, and alongside collects folklore materials for decades. In 1875 he was elected for corresponding member of the Bulgarian Literary Society and in 1900 became its full member - academician. According to the great connoisseur of his work Academician Peter Dinekov, the "Collection of folklore" in six volumes, issued by K. Shapkarev in 1891-1892, is the largest in volume and of territorial breadth collection of folklore and ethnographic materials ever made by one person. The culmination of his long-lived teacher’s and educational activities was the foundation of Thessaloniki Bulgarian Male Secondary School in 1880 along with the establishment of seven textbooks for it. His son - Kliment Shapkarev, teacher and revolutionary, says of himself: "I was born near Ohrid, I am the son of the Bulgarian national revival teacher Kuzman Shapkarev, I am a friend from childhood, classmate, ideological friend and companion of Gotze Delchev - this is the happy star of my life. It helped me to love above all our suffering land and people, to go along the path of revolutionary struggle for the liberation of those Bulgarians still under Ottoman rule, to choose the teaching profession. This is my destiny ..."

For Borian their live and especially the "Collection of Bulgarian folklore ..." of grandfather Kuzman is a source of constant creative inspiration, which can be traced in the themes of his drawings and paintings. We see in this a significant continuation of Shapkarev‘s kin!

In respect to them Borian donated in 2000 an original portrait of Kuzman Shapkarev to the 29th High School in Sofia, which in the spring of that same year adopted the name of the Bulgarian enlightener

RETURN

         I first met Borian Lazarov through fellow artist and exhibitor Edward Mirza when they were both scholars at the Byam Shaw School of Art in London in 1998. Subsequently I had the good fortune to attend the opening nights of their two most exciting exhibitions. On each occasion I had a deep sense of space and personal serenity, feelings which were evidently shared by most of those who attended and which I later realized were closely connected to Lazarov’s paintings and line drawings. Interestingly, by the time of the second exhibition Lazarov found himself so much in demand that he sold all his exhibits.

        The first and most remarkable thing, from my point of view, about Lazarov’s expansive, colorific oil paintings is the unmistakable quality of a “psychic breeze” which emanates particularly from the work entitled “Soothing” and also from “Bulgarian Woman”. Similarly, in his characteristic line drawings, which show an early mastery of exquisite clarity and flowing line, there is a quite startling freshness and immediacy which one might describe as a Western “touch of Zen”. I am thinking again, from memory, of “Fields near Bistriza” and of “Female Bust”. However, his line drawings are also memorable for their Picassoesque quality where the line seems to mark and contain a swelling pith of substance and energy without the slightest excessiveness on either part.

        I am personally rather sorry to see Lazarov return now to his home country. I shall also miss his presence in terms of my own writing since he has agreed to illustrate one of my current works in progress (The Adventures of Gideon Knight). This came about when I saw that his work reminded me very clearly of the “fields of light” – a concept which I had myself explored in a novel some years before. Yes, he has achieved considerable éclat in London despite quite difficult circumstances. He was given a full merit scholarship (no fees at all!) by Byam Shaw as well as being permitted to skip a year because his talents were so clearly recognised by that school. Nevertheless his diplomatic skills were also put to the test whenever he insisted too firmly on his own passionate loyalty to a purist and painterly tradition. Additionally his tutorial encounters with his teachers were a legend in the school for their fiery and unpredictable nature. Lazarov is a man with a vision and a strong sense of personal destiny as a painter.

        Lazarov’s London career has taken the following form: Fridge Gallery Seven New Artists Pay their Respects to Past Masters  (April 9th – 30th 2001); immediately following this exhibition and in the same space Lazarov exhibited in Guests of Edward Mirza (May 2001); The Byam Shaw Summer Show (June 4th – 9th 2001); The Sofia Gallery – courtesy of the Bulgarian Embassy in London Bodyzones and Dreamscapes (June 19th – July 3rd 2001); The Sofia Gallery (July 26th 2001) on the occasion of President Stoyanov’s visit, where Lazarov was an exhibitor and curator and was personally congratulated by Bulgarian painter and sculptor Asen Botev, who also participated in the show.

         Robert Lipscombe, a 50 year old  English writer and author of the Salamander Tree, 1990, is a proud possessor of two Lazarov artworks. Lipscombe is currently working on a film version of his latest novella (Giant Films, London) and devotes his time to creative writing. English Language teaching and the further development of his website www.englishmaster.co.uk.

Paris impressions

"Father and son in Paris"

            Visiting Paris is exciting for everyone, but if painting is your vocation and you are filled with never-ending love to the art of drawing, the opportunity to get there at an early age is extremely valuable, and remains forever as a unique experience.

            The hours spent in the atmosphere of Montmartre, among the paintings in the garden on the peak and in the small cafes, are experiences that even today are a vivid memory and start of interesting conversations. As one knows, many great artists were coming here to share their ideas and doubts about art, life and future, and people stop today in front of their paintings in the galleries and cannot tear themselves from them for long hours.

            In our home library, among other albums we also have an edition of Degas often looked at, and we always stop at the pastels. Their warmth and extreme strong impact attract all of us and we all often enjoy these beautiful reproductions. When my son and I entered the dim-sighted rooms with live Degas‘ pastels, we stood long truly enchanted and could not part with them.

 Fragment from the Book

Picturesque Messages

          I contemplate the stylized picturesque images in the artistic messages "Woman," "Nude", "Enchantress"...and ask the artist what deformation gives him. He answers that while the grotesque is alien to him and cannot be part of his paintings, the deformation helps a lot. And for each artist the nude female body is always a source of beauty and inspiration, it stimulates the senses and masculinity, which is creative in nature. As the woman produces incentives in the man to create life, so does the pictures. What is a picture if not the desire to create something new, something live...

KirilPopov
Fragment from the Book