HUGO Voeten, a Belgian millionaire in the late autumn of his years, has transformed himself into, arguably, the world's greatest patron of Bulgarian sculpture.
In the words of Svetlin Roussev, a sculptor and friend, Voeten's collection, housed on a 25-acre estate in Geel, a town 50 km outside Brussels, “embraces the plastic purity of classicism, the rawness of expressionism, the synthetic simplicity of conceptual thinking and everything that can surprise you and capture your imagination because of its individualism.” 
On May 25, the Foreign Ministry in Sofia opened, with the aid of Voeten and others, a statue park on its grounds. (Unfortunately, the exhibit has been closed to the public indefinitely since the terrorist attacks in London on July 7). According to Nina Mircheva, one of the exhibit's curators, much of the treasures had been consigned to basements, before Voeten and Roussev joined together on a quest to uncover them. The bulk of Voeten's donation consists of a 60 000 euro project to make bronze copies of his favourite pieces from the Geel collection, which are presented in a group next to the parking area in front of the building.
Ljuobomir Dalchev's 1923, Mothers presents a series of women constricted in a narrow columnar space, suffocated by the pain of losing their sons in an anti-fascist uprising. The 1973 statue group, with its series of similar faces, is the exhibit's closest example of Socialist Realism, though the emotion seems deeply personal. Dalchev, who is probably the most famous Bulgarian sculptor of the 20th century, emigrated to the United States in 1979 at the age of 77, and settled in San Francisco. Unable to find patrons, he supported himself designing gravestones before dying in 2002 at age 100. 
Most of the pieces seem apolitical. Valentin Starchev, who currently teaches in the local architecture school, is represented by his abstract piece Idols, made up of two asymmetrical beings, one of which seems to contain a strange child in its belly. Reminiscent of Giacometti, Angel Stanchev's Girl is disturbingly skeletal, framed by a comically wide skirt. Velichko Minekov's Awaiting presents a haunted woman, tightly wrapped in peasant clothes waiting on the side of the road for something or someone.
Mircheva didn't go into details, but apparently Voeten had expressed interest in buying some of the other pieces in the ministry's collection, which sit on a grassy plain next to the building and had been donated by public sources. Was he interested in Galin Malakchiev's Hiroshima, an unsettling depiction of a body deformed and set off-balance by tumours? Ivan Varchev had rebuffed Voeten and Roussev's entreaties to buy his work, but he died a few months ago after falling off a balcony. Voeten had to be interested in the great artist's enigmatic The Twentieth Century, which presented a figure with a laurel wreath and arms outstretched in a crucifix position, and which may be the most striking prize in the exhibit.