A young Bulgarian artist decided to leave this world in the middle of the past century in order to preserve his incorruptibility, even though he was defeated by the system on a purely physical level. Currently, in the gallery of the Bulgarian Cultural Institute in Paris, he is present through his works, telling stories, provoking reflections, but also sending messages that with their relevance revive practices that were supposedly forever left in the past.

Margarit Tsanev, called Margo by his friends, was born in 1944 in Teteven – a small town in the embrace of high mountains.

"He seemed to have two roles – of a loner, a very absorbed independent person, and at the same time he enjoyed having many friends and the good conversations with them, which is quite normal for a person devoted to art,” gallerist and curator of the exhibition, Olimpia Nikolova-Daniel, says.

His talent was noticed in his first school years in his hometown and he graduated from the art high school in Sofia with honors. Painting turned out to be the initial step that led him to the "Sculpture" speciality at the Academy of Arts. Although he left this world at the age of 24, in his work he touches on topics more befitting a white-bearded old wise man. It is as if time made him grow up so quickly or perhaps it was a premonition of the number of his days left here.

A folder of watercolor works found by chance in the attic of the family house in Teteven became the earliest evidence of Margo's first serious attempts at art. Gloomy rooms with identical beds, military order and a stove with a long chimney in the dormitory, human silhouettes hinted at with a light brushstroke, most often in black, recreate an atmosphere of sadness, nostalgia and loneliness.

"We can see his maturity, his profound search to materialize the world, to learn, for example, how to create a wall, a puddle, a landscape - in general, his rather serious and insightful attitude to the things of life,” Olimpia Nikolova points out. “The drawings that we include in the exhibition are an attempt to dematerialize everything that he achieved in watercolors. These are philosophical reflections, expanding the boundaries of knowledge. We have heard that Margo walked with a book of Lao Tzu under his arm and was engaged in this philosophy. So our task was to show his deep and serious attitude to the world through the art that he created."

In one of his paintings, Margarit Tsanev depicts a man with his arms spread like wings. In 1969, he himself jumped from a high cliff in the Balkan Mountain near Teteven, ending his life.

Was Margo's depression personal or rooted in his social life? To this day, his friends cannot give a definitive answer. However, an indisputable fact is the last straw - the student who had been suspended for a year heard the words from the mouth of the dean of the Academy of Arts: "Hey, priest, go shave your beard and when you look good, come and we would enroll you as a student," according to a testimony in the film "Margo and Friends." The young man, who grew a beard as a sign of mourning for his deceased mother and father, however, did not listen to the irrevocable "advice."

"He was a free, true, spiritual aristocrat and did not comply with anything except nature and his talent - that's why they refused to enroll him in the next course, not just because of his beard," one of his friends says. This was followed by expulsion and forced deportation to his native Teteven.

"I think that this final act is a categorical sign of unbearability,” Olimpia Nikolova says. “It is no coincidence that friends and people who knew Margo respect his personality and his work so much. Over time, they became a small society, although in the position of outsiders. But in my opinion, it is important that there are outsiders in a society, that there are people like these friends and like Margarit Tsanev himself, because they become a corrective that makes us not only think, but also not allow this type of repressions."

The rebellion against the system is evident in his works. "Faces are distorted into grotesque, bodies are transformed into lifeless objects, into modules that build monuments and temples. Those crowned with glory are contemptible and pitiful," Olimpia Nikolova adds.

"Despite the isolation of Bulgaria at that time, he caught the ideas in the air. An intelligent and profound person, such as Margarit Tsanev became an absolute equivalent of everything that happens in world phenomena," Olimpia Nikolova says. This is what viewers at the Cultural Institute in Paris currently see in his works in the exhibition "Flight" (until May 23) - "a flight of a rebellious spirit, who challenged the false dominant values ​​of his time and became an example of how “the weak becomes strong" (Lao Tzu), creating a small but sustainable civic society that invisibly corrects".

Author: Diana Tsankova

Publication in English: Al. Markov

Photos: Ministry of Culture, Bulgarian Cultural Institute in Paris, Bulgarian Cultural Institute in Berlin