ABSTRACT
In the case of Bulgaria, a keen interest in modernist art and the European avant-garde movements, specifically expressionism, began shortly before and then continued to grow during the First World War. The training, specialization, and experiences of Bulgarian artists and art protagonists in the centers of German expressionist printmaking were of utmost importance for the reception of expressionism in Bulgaria. Engravings in wood and metal have been known in the Bulgarian territories since the eighteenth century; religious engravings, shtampa, from the “national revival” period, were circulated by the monasteries. The training, specialization, and experiences of Bulgarian artists and art protagonists in the field of printmaking, especially in Germany, were of utmost importance. The expressionist transformation in Bulgarian printmaking was linked with an important iconographic motive—Christ’s suffering and passion. An ideological similarity, albeit distant, between expressionism, conceived as a German version of modernism, and the broader hybrid movement of modernism in Bulgaria, was the striving to be both local and national.
