Vaska Emanuilova and Paris is the first exhibition in the Vaska Emanuilova Gallery’s museum program marking 120 years since the artist’s birth. Restored in 2006 in a new space near Zaimov Park, the gallery has since been developing a museum program that shows the public the work of the famous Bulgarian sculptor, while supplementing and enriching knowledge about her legacy.

This exhibition presents Vaska Emanuilova’s story of her trip to the “city of art” and the impact that her six-month stay in Paris had on her entire body of work. The starting point of this exhibition is the text that Vaska created about this city and about her only trip outside the country, in 1939. She describes in it the interesting story of how she received a scholarship for specialized study in Paris, connected with sculpting of a portrait bust of Madame Baelen – the wife of the first secretary of the French legation in Sofia, Jean Baelen. Her acquaintance with the Baelen family was the “lucky coincidence” through which she received the scholarship to Paris.

The exhibition includes three main parts: The Story of a Work, which tells about the creation of Madame Baelen’s portrait; In the City of Art, which presents her journals with drawings made in Paris; and Lessons of Paris, which summarizes the impact that her stay in the French capital – the museums, galleries, and artists – had on the sculptor’s overall body of work. An essential part of the exhibition is the installation with video, sound, and objects by Ralitsa Georgieva, which attempts to present Vaska Emanuilova’s impressions and enrich the story of this important journey of the artist by immersing the audience in her personal memories and the spirit of Paris of the late 1930s.

The current project is an attempt to show part of this journey through the gallery’s archive and collection and in the context of historical evidence. The exhibition includes sculptures, drawings, archival documents, and photographs from the collection of the Vaska Emanouilova Gallery, branch of the Sofia City Art Gallery, the Donation of Svetlin Roussev Collection, branch of City Art Gallery Pleven, the Sofia History Museum, the State Archives Agency, as well as catalogues from the library of the Union of Bulgarian Artists and Evgenia Hristova archive.