15. Rhodope landscape [1963]

Lika Yanko was born in Sofia on March 19, 1928 as Evangeliya Lazar Grabova in the family of Lazar Yankov Grabov - an Albanian public figure and chairman of the Union of Albanian Cultural Societies in Bulgaria. She studied at the French College in Sofia, where she became acquainted with Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, which later had a strong influence on her work. In 1946 she was accepted into the Academy of Arts, majoring in Painting, under professors Dechko Uzunov and Iliya Petrov, but did not graduate. Her first solo exhibition was in 1967 in Sofia, but was terminated prematurely. Lika Yanko continued to paint, but did not exhibit her canvases until 1981. In the mid-1970s, her paintings began to be purchased by foreign embassies and received high praise from European gallery owners. Throughout her life, Lika Yanko held 7 solo exhibitions. At the end of her life, she donated 82 canvases to the Sofia Art Gallery and 100 to the National Gallery. In the 1960s, Lika Yanko worked in the field of classical painting technique on canvas. In 1962, the painting “Self-portrait with a dog” provoked criticism from the Bulgarian Academy of Arts, which was the reason for the artist to isolate herself for a long time from official artistic life. From the mid-1960s, she began to experiment with the texture of the canvas by layering large amounts of oil paint and literally modeling the painted surface. During the same period, she began to work in the collage technique, with which she is recognizable in Bulgarian art. On the white background of the canvas, she glued colored stones, glass, beads, which were outlined by hemp braided ropes. The painting “Rhodopes Landscape” refers to the early work of Lika Yanko, when she worked in a traditional painting technique with oil paints on canvas. The colors are decorative - bright, saturated tones, strong contrasts, often much more emotional than strictly naturalistic. Thus, Lika Yanko's landscapes from this period carry an element of abstraction - the landscape is not just a "realistic portrait" of nature, but rather its "rebirth" through the artist's personal sensibility. The work presents all the characteristic features of her pictorial work - the primary power of color, conventionality and syntheticity of images and an inimitable visual language. (S.N.)"

Dimensions

width 68 cm, height 48.5 cm, custom 48,5 × 68 cm

Description

oil on canvas laid on cardboard, signed and dated bottom right, in blue, "Л. Янко, (19)63"

Research information

The artwork is reproduced in Iliev, Krasimir. "Lika Yanko: Communicating with the Sacred", Lorani Gallery, 2019, p. 117, no. 12, with the title "Rhodopi Landscape"

Dating

1963

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