About The Artist Todor VASSILEV Born on February 22nd 1948 in Sofia - Bulgaria In 1969, following the family tradition, he began studying medicine at the University of Sofia. But in his fourth year he decided to change and he registered at the Academy of Fine Arts of Sofia (section: Applied-Arts, Design and Fashion). At the end of his studies, he spent one year in Poland and specialized in the Icon technics. He also went to Russia several time where he worked on movie setting. His political opinions obliged him to leave his own country in 1981. He settled in France and worked as Artistic Director in a Advertising Agency. Being the Prize-winner at "the Grand Prix de France" for two consecutive years, he got the first Drawing Prize in 1988 and the first Painting Prize in 1989. In 1992 he took part in the exhibition of S.N.B.A at the "Grand Palais" and in 1993 in the Autumn Exhibition. In 1992 he also participated in an exhibition of famous Bulgarian Artists in Sofia. The National Museum of Sofia made him a proposition for his paintings. Now they belong to the National Artistic Heritage. In 1998 he made an exhibition in Esternay in the Marne whose tittle was "Contemparay Art in rural environment". In 1999 and 2000 he showed his paintings in Rheims for the Orange Exhibition and took part in the Exhibition of the S.N.B.A in "the Carrousel of the Louvre" and he invited an Bulgarian delegation of five famous artists. In 1999 "Merit and French Devotion" awarded him a gold medal for his committed work of art exposed in "the Carrousel of the Louvre". An official exhibition will be dedicated to him in November 2000 in Sofia. Todor VASSILEV These last years Todor VASSILEV's painting is not appropriately speaking, a traditional one, it reflects life, death, love, events of the moment. These current events inspire him and improve his art. His work is concentrated, dense, synthesized and sometimes cruel... That cruelty comes from these concentrated thoughts expressed through his paintings. His real obsession is, above all, to transmit, as well as possible, theses realities through his vision. Painting, for him, is neither the result of a fashion, nor a hobby, it is a deep and absolute need. Expressing and carrying his feelings with regard to the life or to the events of the moment. His painting is not a game, it is directed. The painter transmits messages. Everyone, according to his sensibility, his motivation, his actual experiences, will catch, seize, understand or will interprete the truth as he feels it. The mixture or feelings and the non-respect of his very special style explain in part Todor VASSILEV's philosophy. Painting is not used to make beautiful and pretty things, it is a tool that carries the truth of the artist. Whatever the technic he uses, Todor VASSILEV paints the truth in all its possible ways. "For me, he says, beauty exists under all its forms, human being in handsome in spite of the fact that his aberrations, his crimes, his destructions. All that has to be denounced ? I do not feel any interest, he adds, in the sterile research of the esthetisim alone, if it is not an applied form to the message". Copyright 1999 All rights reserved Concorde Fine Arts