Ivan Milev

Biography

Thirty paintings lay in the vault of a Sofia bank. The artist’s widow had deposited them there for safekeeping during the bombing of Sofia. When in 1957 his family came to collect them for an exhibition marking thirty years since Ivan Milev’s death, the paintings were no longer there. Their later fate is unknown; it is thought that some ended up abroad. Among the missing were some of the best works of his mature period, 1925–1927.

Milev was born in Kazanlak on 19 February 1897 (18 February is also given). His father was a shepherd or, in another version, a Kazanlak schoolteacher named Milyu Lalev. In 1916 Milev was called up. In Sofia he was assigned as a military artist to the staff of the aviation company, and in 1917 he found himself a soldier at the front. In November 1917, while on leave, he opened a two-day solo exhibition in Kazanlak. After demobilisation in 1918 he finished secondary school in his home town, then taught for a year or two in the village of Gorski Izvor, near Haskovo.

In 1920 he was admitted to the State Academy of Art in Sofia. For two years he followed the general course, then moved to the decoration department under Professor Stefan Badzhov. While still a student, Milev held three solo exhibitions and worked as an illustrator and cartoonist for the newspaper “Cherven smyah” (“Red Laughter”). In 1922 he drew covers for the publisher Argus: for “Death” by Vladimir Polyanov, “The Blue Chrysanthemum” by Svetoslav Minkov, “Fantasies” by Edgar Allan Poe and “Fear” by Hanns Heinz Ewers. He also designed the poetry collection “Arena” by Lamar. In the summer of 1923 he travelled with fellow students to Istanbul, Athens and Corfu, and then to Naples, Rome, Florence and Venice. It was the first time he had seen the Italian Renaissance and Baroque in person. In January 1924, together with Ivan Penkov, he designed the sets for Leonid Andreyev’s play “He Who Gets Slapped” at the National Theatre, and afterwards designed several more productions there. He completed the course in 1925 with distinction in set decoration. After that he worked as a freelance artist and illustrator and painted the walls of private houses. In the same year, 1925, he took part with Vasil Vichev in the competition for a monument on Shipka, and their design won second place. In the spring of 1926 Milev was accepted into the society “Rodno izkustvo” (“Native Art”), and at its exhibition he showed “Madonna” and “The Legend of Mount Athos”.

He married the opera singer Ekaterina Naumova in 1925 (the month is given as July or September). Her features are found in the painting “Akhinora”. In May 1926 their daughter Mariya was born, later an architect. They lived in poverty.

Of his work from those years, watercolours and gouaches survive in the National Art Gallery in Sofia: “Gadulka Player” (1924), the triptych “The Maglizh Monastery” (1924), “Village Madonna” and “Refugee Women” (both 1925), “Winter Fairy Tale”, “The Black Bread” and “Our Mothers Are Always Dressed in Black” (all 1926). The Kazanlak gallery owns “Akhinora”, “The Wedding” and “The Balkan”. Contemporaries’ accounts of Milev’s manner differ, and I think he is easier to understand from the sheets themselves: flat planes of colour, a golden ground like that of icons, and beside them peasant women in black and refugees with bundles. His 1924 portrait of Anna Kamenova is treated differently, in the Secession style, with decorative opulence and exotic details. Milev also wrote poems, long poems and prose.

In December 1926 he fell ill, and on 25 January 1927 he died in Sofia, not yet thirty. A memorial exhibition opened on 27 February 1927 at the Trapkov Gallery in Sofia. For the centenary of his birth, in May and June 1997, retrospectives were held at the National Art Gallery and in Kazanlak. Two years later his portrait appeared on the 5-leva banknote.