The Svetlin Rusev Donative Exhibition is a permanent art exhibition in Pleven

Pleven

Pleven is the seventh most populous city in Bulgaria. Located in the northern part of the country, it is the administrative centre of Pleven Province, as well as of the subordinate Pleven municipality...

, Bulgaria

Bulgaria

Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...

, including over 400 works of Bulgarian and foreign art donated by the noted Bulgarian artist and collector Svetlin Rusev

Svetlin Rusev

Svetlin Rusev is a famous artist and one of the greatest Bulgarian collectors of creations of art. He is very famous for the Svetlin Rusev Donative Exhibition, a permanent art exhibition in Pleven, including over 400 works of Bulgarian and foreign art donated by him.-References:...

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The exhibition occupies the three-storey historic building of the former public baths built in the 1900s and commissioned to Nikola Lazarov

Nikola Lazarov

Nikola Ivanov Lazarov was a Bulgarian architect.Lazarov was born in the sub-Balkan town of Karlovo, then part of the Ottoman Empire . His father, a rose oil and woolen braid dealer and manufacturer, was killed by the Ottomans during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 which led to the Liberation...

, who combined Neo-Byzantine, Neo-Moorish and Ottoman elements in its design. It served as the city's public baths until 1970, and has been home to the exhibition since 1984, when Rusev donated 322 works of his collection of paintings and sculptures, in 1999 adding 82 more.

Works of the best-known Bulgarian artists from the early 20th century are exhibited on the first storey. These include Zlatyu Boyadzhiev

Zlatyu Boyadzhiev

Zlatio Georgiev Boiadjiev was a Bulgarian painter. He is known for his portraits and landscapes, depicting mainly the Old Town of Plovdiv and village life in its vicinity....

, Tsanko Lavrenov, Sirak Skitnik, Kiril Petrov, Bencho Obreshkov

Bencho Obreshkov

Bencho Yordanov Obreshkov was a renowned Bulgarian painter.He graduated under P. Klissurov and I. Angelov from the Sofia Academy of Fine Arts in 1920, and specialized in painting under Oskar Kokoshka in Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden in 1926 and sculpture under Antoine Bourdelle, Paris in 1925 -...

, Dechko Uzunov

Dechko Uzunov

Dechko Uzunov was a Bulgarian painter. He was born in Kazanluk and died in Sofia at the age of 87....

, Vladimir Dimitrov, etc.

The second storey mainly features contemporary Bulgarian painters, such as Nikola Manev, Vesa Vasileva, Encho Pironkov, Georgi Bozhilov

Georgi Bozhilov

Georgi Bozhilov is a Bulgarian football forward who currently plays for Cherno More Varna.-International career:On 2 September 2011, Bozhilov made his debut for the Bulgarian national team, when he came on as a substitute in a Euro 2012 qualifying match against England for the final 28...

, but also the oldest painting in the gallery, a 17th-century work by an unknown French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 author, as well as a painting by Vienna Secession

Vienna Secession

The Vienna Secession was formed in 1897 by a group of Austrian artists who had resigned from the Association of Austrian Artists, housed in the Vienna Künstlerhaus. This movement included painters, sculptors, and architects...

 artist Josef Bauer.

On the third storey, occupying the building's towers, one can see not only a collection of works of leading Bulgarian engravers such as Iliya Beshkov, Vladimir Dimitrov and Sidoniya Atanasova, but also famous Western Europe

Western Europe

Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...

an artists like Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

, Francisco Goya

Francisco Goya

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker regarded both as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns. Goya was a court painter to the Spanish Crown, and through his works was both a commentator on and chronicler of his era...

, Honoré Daumier

Honoré Daumier

Honoré Daumier was a French printmaker, caricaturist, painter, and sculptor, whose many works offer commentary on social and political life in France in the 19th century....

, Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall Art critic Robert Hughes referred to Chagall as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century."According to art historian Michael J...

, Maurice Denis

Maurice Denis

Maurice Denis was a French painter and writer, and a member of the Symbolist and Les Nabis movements. His theories contributed to the foundations of cubism, fauvism, and abstract art.-Childhood and education:...

, Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Pierre-Auguste Renoir was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to...

, Salvador Dalí

Salvador Dalí

Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....

, Renato Guttuso

Renato Guttuso

Renato Guttuso was an Italian painter.His best-known paintings include Flight from Etna , Crucifixion and La Vucciria . Guttuso also designed for the theatre and did illustrations for books...

 and Eugène Delacroix

Eugène Delacroix

Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school...

, as well as small sculptures of Auguste Rodin

Auguste Rodin

François-Auguste-René Rodin , known as Auguste Rodin , was a French sculptor. Although Rodin is generally considered the progenitor of modern sculpture, he did not set out to rebel against the past...

 and Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas[p] , born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, was a French artist famous for his work in painting, sculpture, printmaking and drawing. He is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism although he rejected the term, and preferred to be called a realist...

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