Rumen Skorchev

Rumen Skorchev (1932-2015) was a Bulgarian printmaker, illustrator, draughtsman, and painter whose graphic practice spanned six decades and placed him among the leading twentieth-century Bulgarian print artists, with notable 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 Academy of Fine Arts in Sofia in 1964. In 1984 he became a professor at the National Academy of Art in Sofia, and in 2009 he was elected an actual member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

His ties to Japan are a defining thread of his later career. In 1979 he was awarded a scholarship by the Japan Foundation (Kokusai Koryu Kikin), the principal Japanese government instrument for cultural exchange. His prints later circulated through major Japanese exhibitions, most notably 'Contemporary Bulgarian Art Prints in Japan,' presented at the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art (30 September - 13 October 2003) and the Tokushima Modern Art Museum (8-13 November 2003). That touring exhibition was organized by the Lessedra gallery together with the Japan Foundation, the Japanese Embassy in Bulgaria, and the Union of Bulgarian Artists, and presented thirty Bulgarian printmakers alongside sixty Japanese counterparts.

Skorchev was among the most internationally decorated Bulgarian print artists of his generation. He won a Gold Medal at the II International Print Biennale in Florence in 1970 and accumulated more than forty international and national print prizes over his career. His prints are held in the permanent collections of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Bibliotheque nationale de France in Paris, the Albertina in Vienna, and the National Gallery of Bulgaria, among other institutions, and his illustrations were included in the international reference 'Who's Who in Graphic Art' in 1982 and 1994.

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 two lithographs, 'Pandora's Box VI' (2000) and 'Pandora's Box VIII' (2001) - exemplifies his mature graphic register: meticulously composed figurative compositions drawing on classical and mythological iconography, executed in dense, layered lithographic line and tone. As an illustrator he worked extensively on Bulgarian literary classics and children's books, a parallel professional channel through which several generations came to know his graphic style.

Within the postwar Bulgarian print scene, Skorchev was among the artists who built the international reputation of Bulgarian printmaking through sustained 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 principal channels through which Bulgarian and Japanese print practices were brought into exchange, a relationship exemplified by Skorchev's own trajectory from the 1979 Japan Foundation scholarship to the 2003 touring exhibition.

Skorchev died in 2015. His work is held and exhibited by major Bulgarian institutions, including the National Gallery of Bulgaria, and he was the subject of a retrospective, 'Rumen Skorchev: Painting and Drawing,' at the Sofia City Art Gallery; the principal documentation of his Japan-tied output is the Lessedra 2003 'Contemporary Bulgarian Art Prints in Japan' catalogue.