Bulgaria, "Dali's Moustache" and Picasso

published on 1/11/25 10:05 AM

Anna Mutavska

Photo: BTA

The connection between Bulgaria, "Dali's Moustache" and Picasso is a topic that could remain widely discussed in the next few years, and perhaps even decades. The reason for this is not related to new technologies and artificial intelligence, nor to discoveries in the genealogical connections of the great artists of the 20th century, but to a Bulgarian woman - the artist Anna Mutavska.

Born in Bulgaria's coastal city Burgas and known more on the international art scene than in her native Bulgaria, Anna Mutavska began her creative path in Spain, which was also her home at the time. Her paintings quickly found their admirers among collectors in Canada, France, Spain, and also in Bulgaria. Soon her canvases began to receive professional recognition from prestigious contemporary art competitions.

One of them was her prize from "Dali's Moustache" competition in Madrid in 2022. Shortly thereafter, the organizers of the International Peace Festival in Canada compared one of her canvases to Pablo Picasso's most famous painting, and in 2023, the curator of the Milan Biennale, Salvo Nugness, defined Anna Mutavska as an "inspirer of art and culture" and emphasized that her works "never cease to captivate viewers" because they are "a bridge that runs through art itself".

Today, art gallerists and curators from Europe and North America show exceptional interest in the Bulgarian artist's work, defining it as a phenomenon comparable to that of the great artists of the 20th century. In September 2024, her canvases were exhibited for the first time on the territory of Bulgaria, in the artist's hometown of Burgas.

Anna's talent was evident since her childhood, when at the age of 10 she won her first prize in a national children's drawing competition, and the then-president Dr. Zhelyo Zhelev personally presented her with the diploma. However, after graduating from high school, Anna embarked on a completely different professional path. It took her to Spain, and there art found its way to her.

Anna's story sounds both like a fairy tale and a provocation that can overturn some of our most basic ideas about the world, such as the one that we ourselves determine what professional path we want to take, and our options for choice are unlimited. What would happen, however, if we imagined for a moment that the path were the one that seeks us out? And if we let ourselves be found by it, we could unleash our full potential and even show talent, as Anna herself claims.

"If God kissed you and said - "You will be like this!" You will be!" – you will spend your whole life doing something different, as in my case, much more profitable and less nerve-recking and in the end you return to your calling. Before I became an artist, I had a fairly successful business in the field of management, tourism and business administration. Now, thanks to some of the Spanish competitions, I am a scholarship holder at the Madrid Academy of Arts, and the specialty I am studying is "History of Art"", shares Anna Mutavska, and one of the competitions that determined her path as a scholarship holder at the Academy is "Dali's Moustache". The painting she participated with is four-dimensional and is titled "Love is a Dove".

'Love is a Dove'
"The general idea was about unity in this callous world, in which one of the values is love. Each side of the painting depicted a different aspect of it and a different plot. In my childhood, I was impressed by Claude Monet and how at first nothing is understood in his paintings, but when you look more closely, everything becomes clear. There was wind in them. This wind that should always be present in everything a person does. Even if one sells chewing gum, it should be there!" says Anna Mutavska.

Today, Anna's favorite artist is Picasso - the very one she has been compared to at the festival in Canada:

'The Future' dubbed as the 'Modern Guernica'

"I participated absolutely anonymously in this part, which was about culture related to art. I have a third award, but there was no other in this field. Then the Canadian curator and the curator of one of the New York galleries called my painting "The Modern Guernica". The interesting thing is that I am the only one who was compared to Picasso, and I am a woman and I am Bulgarian, and I will always remain so. I love Bulgaria, I adore it!" notes with a smile Anna Mutavska, for whom the "wind", it seems, is that inexplicable feeling in which everyone could express their full potential, while creating connections where logical concepts fail. Such is also the nature of the connection between Bulgaria, "Dali's Moustache" and Picasso.

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