Стоян Райнов – от европейските училища до Художествената академия
Stoyan Raynov – from the European Schools to the National Academy of Art

Summary/Abstract: Stoyan Rainov is an outstanding figure in the Bulgarian artistic life of the 20th century. At first glance the sources for his life and work are numerous and detailed but we know about the period, in which the idea was born for his occupation in ceramic art mainly from stories. After graduating from high school, Stoyan Rainov joined the Artistic- Industrial School, where his professors were Prof. Anton Mitov, Prof. Zheko Spiridonov and Prof. Stefan Ivanov. He graduated the Department of Decorative Art in 1918 and organized his own exhibition, which enjoyed success. According to Stoyan Rainov’s personal account, the idea for his turn towards ceramic art was also born at that time with the help of his friend Asen Zlatarov. Zlatarov is an intellectual, a scholar and a poet, one of the participants in the later appearing literary circle „Streletz”, the goal of which was the rise of Bulgarian culture to European level but on a native base. Stoyan Rainov started his training in ceramics at the Artistic-Industrial School, going abroad soon. He spent more than a year in Bechyně, the Czech Republic studying ceramic art in the school, located in that town. He continued his training later in Dresden, Höhr-Grenzhausen and Paris. The artist – ceramicist chose carefully the locations, where to improve his skills with the ultimate goal of laying the foundation of the new ceramic art in Bulgaria. When Rainov returned to Bulgaria he got acquainted with traditional ceramics in the country, visiting the old ceramics centers in Busintsi, Troyan, Vratsa and the region of Sofia. In 1932 he won a competition for a professor at the National Academy of Art. Stoyan Rainov made use of what he had learned in the major European centers, considering at the same time the folk tradition to be an inexhaustible source of inspiration.

• Details
• Contents