Retelling – simply a vague ersatz of the real bits and pieces. One should just experience the whole atmosphere of Lyuben Stoev’s exhibitions and the wild, memorable, cranky parties afterwards.

No matter what the exhibition is – picturesque, exotic Third World woodcuts or the more severe, ultra-realistic present-time Bulgarian replicas – it fixes itself in one’s mind.
Usually the after party is held at his brother’s house (noted Bulgarian film director Djeki Stoev). It is actually their family house, cosily nestled in a backyard off Slaveikov Square in Sofia, just a little ways from the fading booksellers and buzzing trams. With a memorial plaque of a prominent family member right at the entrance. Lyuben Stoev remembers from his childhood this same place as a horse-carriage stand…

Picture this beautiful antique apartment with a grand terrace and a fireplace having gathered more than 50-60 people, each one being himself interesting to 50 more. As, of course, at the centre of the whole thing is the artist himself – Stoev dressed in, for instance, a vagrant’s costume as Raj Kapur with an accordion, performing songs in Hindi; together with Icko Finci, the famous Bulgarian actor – violin; Prof Simeon Shterev (aka Banana) – flute; etc., and the whole amazing crowd of film people, artists, musicians, journalists, diplomats, young and old, children, foreigners, different ethnicities… a colourful beehive.

As Stoev says, this spacious living room was the first one to hold a meeting and a record of the first Bulgarian dissident and democratic president, Zhelyo Zhelev, and his supporters.

The party dedicated to the exhibition goes on for hours and hours, filled with dances, plays, songs and conversations. This same situation is repeated after more or less three months, at Lyuben Stoev’s atelier-house on the outskirts of Sofia, in a panelled flat facing Mount Vitosha – invited and uninvited come and go from 7pm to 7am (on the next day), as the artist himself announces – from seven to 70 years old. Once more the same multicoloured throng gathers – arts critics, journalists, black and white, foreigners, Japanese singing Bulgarian folk songs from the Rhodope mountains, sailors, sea captains (whom Stoev has met during his long voyages at sea – while he painted on board). Forty to 50 people in total, constantly moving around, with lots of wine and snacks.

After midnight the key programme starts, the musical performances begin. At the centre is the ancient, small piano – so mobile that it fits in the back trunk of a soviet Lada (as the artist himself says) and so he can bring it to his friends’ parties. The musical programme includes everything: Latino, sentimental tangos, Russian romances, jazz, songs from soviet films. With Anita Kristi – the wonderful Roma singer – and the exceptional Icko Finci – violin; Banana – flute; Jonny Penkov, the great comic – drums; Vasko Parmakov – piano; Lyuben Stoev – accordion, harmonica and Indian tinkles at his ankles – the man-orchestra as he himself describes it, but “no musician at all”. He just has a simple “musical recipe”: happy things in C-sharp and sad things in A-flat. And suddenly the famous jazz-flute of Shterev should accompany Stoev. What an insolence! Not too modest at all, as Stoev himself puts it.

But who is Lyuben Stoev after all?

A graphic artist. Graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden. Since then, he works and wonders (wanders?) around the world. According to him, art should not only be “Die gute Stube” – i.e., an embellishment for a pretty room, even though there is nothing wrong in that. That is why he is interested in lives of ordinary people. That is why he composes his pieces at the mines of Pernik, Bulgaria, and he is invited to stay a longer period of time in Germany, to Gelsenkirchen and Bergenkamen – to the mines as well.

And because he really wants to see what is going on around the world, he travels around the Algerian desert, boards a cargo ship and for a year and a half he journeys on three different ships. He crosses the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Indian Ocean. Thus, lives on the ship and there is his atelier as well. Furthermore, over a period of more than 25 years he makes the cycle woodcut – Third World.

At that time, most of the ship’s cargo was meant as “aid for brother-countries”, i.e., armaments, as he retells. As a result he visits the most intriguing places in the world – Angola, Mozambique, Tanzania, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Nicaragua... And more “serene” places as well – such as Singapore, Japan and Thailand. As the artist himself says, at that time he has made such “absurd leaps” as from grand Japan to the Albania of Enver Hodja (the Albanian dictator). And from Singapore to North Korea and its great ruler – Kim Ir Sen. What a multicultural patchwork!

Consequently, he has had numerous exhibitions in Bulgaria, Germany, Austria, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Algeria, Mozambique, India, Nicaragua and so on. He has received numerous prizes and stipends, the most notable of which is the Grand Prix at the International Graphics Biennale at Banska Bistrica (the ex-Chezoslovakia in 1984).

What does the present hold for him, then?

Despite the great changes and the establishment of the Bulgarian market economy, during the past years, Stoev has been creating art (paintings and installations) for which before November 10 1989 he would have been prosecuted. Even presently with his art, “he spoils the good disposition” of the representatives of the Bulgarian political and economic elite. And the pieces he creates are therefore unsalable. This was exactly how his exhibition Bulgarian Market Economy was perceived, when it was provocatively exhibited in the Bulgarian Parliament. It left a very sour aftertaste, with the pictured orphans’ institutions and such.

In December-January 2005/06 he exhibited the cycle Social Kitchen at Sofia City Art Gallery. And at present, he is preparing a huge assembly of paintings and installations created at his atelier – compositions in big format, on canvas, for instance Separate Collection of Litter. The exhibition will be opened on January 19 2007 at the Shipka Art Gallery and the cycle will be called Outsiders (beggars, foodstuff and petty business). It is inspired by Bertold Brecht’s opera Die Dreigroschenoper, and as its motto takes the finale of the opera itself – Und man sieht die im Lichte, Die in Dunkeln sieht man nicht…(In light the eyes can see, in darkness they can not…)

And Stoev adds: “In 2006 the world is celebrating 50 years of Brecht’s own finale...”