Rumen Skorchev

Rumen Skorchev (1932-2015) was a Bulgarian printmaker, illustrator, draughtsman, and painter whose graphic practice — sustained over six decades — placed him among the leading 20th-century Bulgarian print artists with deep institutional ties to Japan. He graduated in Landscape Architecture from the University of Forestry in Sofia in 1957, then completed studies in Illustration at the Sofia Art Academy in 1964. From 1984 he held a professorship at the National Academy of Art in Sofia, and in 2009 he was elected an actual member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

His Japanese tie is the principal reason for his inclusion in the contemporary-print roster of this database. In 1979 he was awarded a scholarship by the Japan Foundation (Kokusai Kōryū Kikin), the principal Japanese government instrument for cultural exchange, which underwrote his sustained engagement with Japanese print practice. His prints subsequently circulated through major Japanese exhibitions, most notably 'Contemporary Bulgarian Art Prints in Japan,' presented at Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art (30 September - 13 October 2003) and Tokushima Modern Art Museum (8-13 November 2003). The 2003 Japan touring exhibition was organized under the patronage of the Japan Foundation and the Japanese Embassy in Bulgaria, with the Lessedra gallery as Bulgarian coordinator, and presented thirty Bulgarian printmakers alongside sixty Japanese counterparts.

Skorchev is among the most decorated Bulgarian print artists internationally. He won a Gold medal at the II International Print Biennale in Florence in 1970 and amassed over forty international print prizes during his career. His prints are held in the permanent collections of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, the Albertina in Vienna, and the National Gallery of Bulgaria, among other institutions. The Swiss encyclopedia 'Who's Who in Graphic Art' (Zurich) included him in 1982 and 1994 among the 300 most important graphic artists of the twentieth century.

His principal medium was lithography, with sustained work also in copperplate engraving and book illustration. The 'Pandora's Box' series — represented in the 2003 Japan exhibition by 'Pandora's Box VI' (2000, lithograph 52 × 38 cm) and 'Pandora's Box VIII' (2001, lithograph 38 × 54 cm) — exemplifies his mature graphic register: meticulously composed figurative compositions with classical-mythological iconography, executed in dense, layered lithographic line and tone. As an illustrator, Skorchev worked extensively on Bulgarian literary classics, including the partisan poet Nikola Vaptsarov's 'Motorni Pesni' ('Motor Songs'), and his book-design and illustration work was a parallel professional channel through which his graphic style reached a broad public.

Within the postwar Bulgarian print scene, Skorchev was one of the small group of artists — alongside Nikolai Maystorov, Ivan Ninov, and Milko Bozhkov — who established the international reputation of Bulgarian printmaking through circulation in major triennials and biennials in Japan, Italy, and Eastern Europe. The Lessedra-organized Japan exhibitions and the Lessedra World Art Print Annual in Sofia were the principal channels through which Bulgarian and Japanese print practices were brought into sustained exchange, and Skorchev's career trajectory is the canonical example of the Bulgarian-Japanese print exchange relationship that began with the 1979 Japan Foundation scholarship and continued through the 2003 touring exhibition.