Ilia Beshkov

Biography

Beshkov was first arrested in 1923, at the age of twenty-one: he had taken part in the June Uprising, the revolt that followed the coup in Bulgaria. The second arrest came in 1925, after the April events and the bombing of the St Nedelya Church in Sofia.

Those were his student years.

He was born on 24 July 1901 in Dolni Dabnik, near Pleven. His full name was Ilia Beshkov Dunov. In 1918 he entered the Faculty of Law at Sofia University, left it two years later and returned briefly to his home region as a teacher. In 1921 he began studying painting at the Academy of Art in Sofia, in the class of Nikola Marinov, and graduated on 30 June 1926. While still a student he published caricatures in the magazines Maskarad, Div Dyado, Balgaran, Sturshel and Vik, and designed books for the Chipev and Hemus publishing houses. From 1925 he worked with the newspaper Pladne, where in 1928–1934 he was a staff artist, and besides it he drew for Zemedelsko Zname, Seyach, Lik, Shtit, Shturets, Savremennik and Zhar.

From 1930 he belonged to the society Rodno Izkustvo (“Native Art”). In 1936 the cycle “Spanish Chronicle” appeared. In 1940 Beshkov became one of the founders of the anti-fascist weekly Sturshel (“The Hornet”), where he published drawings with no signature or pseudonym; the magazine appeared in 1940–1941, and after 1944 Beshkov again contributed to it. Among his comic characters, “Speculator Max” is the best known.

During the Second World War he made series of political caricatures: “Diplomats” (1941), “War” (1942), “Execution” (1942), “The Guardians” (1942), “Everything for the Front” (1943) and “Sinister 1943”. Everyday caricature took up no less of his time: villagers and village priests, the petty bourgeois bored by the monotony of daily life, helpless maidservants and their lecherous masters, train passengers, gendarmes, tramps. He drew in a distinctive manner of painterly chiaroscuro, and, to my mind, it is recognisable in his sheets at first glance.

Books were a separate part of his work. He illustrated children’s magazines and newspapers and more than fifty books: “The Fairy-Tale World” (1929) and “Aneto” (1938) by Angel Karaliychev, “Toshko the African” (1940) by the same author, “The Devils in the Cellar” by a writer named Popov (1938), “Forget-Me-Nots” by Genov (1944), “From Elephant to Ant” by Dimcho Gabe (1945), “The Stork Dentist” by Dushkov (1946), “The Mouse Kingdom” by Stubel (1946), “The Cricket Plays” by Elin Pelin (1947), “The Wheat Cake” by Karaliychev (1948) and “Astronomy for the People” by Georgi Tomalevski (1950).

In 1945 Beshkov began teaching drawing, illustration and book design at the Academy. In 1953 he became a full professor and headed the Department of Graphics until the end of his life; his passionate teaching is remembered as an influence on a whole generation of graphic artists and illustrators. Meanwhile his brother, the politician Ivan Beshkov, was sentenced to death by the People’s Court, the tribunal set up by the new communist authorities, and shot on 1 February 1945. The artist himself remained under constant surveillance by the state security service, even under the new regime. He nonetheless received honours: the Order of 9 September 1944 (1946), the Dimitrov Prize, a state award (1950), and the title of People’s Artist (1955).

Beshkov died in Sofia on 23 January 1958. The art gallery in Pleven, where most of his works are held, bears his name, as do streets in the Sofia districts of Druzhba and Kanala, and the Union of Bulgarian Artists established a prize for drawing and caricature in his name.