THE NATIONAL GALLERY presents – Bulgarian National Committee of ICOM

NICHOLAS ROERICH

30 HIMALAYAN LANDSCAPE

12 May – 11 June 2023

Opening on May 12, Friday, 6:00 p.m

Square 500, “St. Alexander Nevsky”,

19 February Street, No. 1

Nikolai Roerich (1874 – 1947) is known not only as an artist, but also as a writer, archaeologist, scientist, public figure, philosopher and educator. He spent decades of his life traveling and exploring the Himalayas, which also became his home.

In the 1930s and 1940s, in a series of landscapes, the artist explored these mountains and, investing his spiritual insights, reflected the beauty and mysticism of the region, capturing the colorful natural states in different seasons and at different times of the day.

The National Gallery owns about 250 works by the painter, donated to the Bulgarian state in the late 1970s by his son Svetoslav Roerich.

The present exhibition includes 30 landscapes that take us to places whose mysticism and mystery are visible to the spiritually enlightened. Among the indisputable merits of Nicholas Roerich is the initiation of Pax Cultura – Treaty on the Protection of Artistic and Scientific Institutions and Historic Monuments (The Roerich Pact).

This treaty for the protection of cultural monuments was signed on April 15, 1935 in Washington, in the office of the President of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt, by representatives of all the member states of the Pan American Union. be respected as international neutral territory and the protection of cultural heritage both in wartime and in peacetime be regulated.