User:ZeleniLimoni/Yova Raevska

Yova Todorova Raevska-Gurinova is a ceramic master of Bulgarian origin, with two awards of the "Cyril and Methodius" order for dedication to art in Bulgaria. She was born on March 4, 1918 in the city of Troyan in the family of Todor Tsvetkov Raevski and his wife Maria (Mita). Yova Raevska has two sisters - Nevena and Velika. She has two sons Lubomir (1944) and Krasimir (later Kras Gorin, 1948).

Early life and education
Raevska was born on 4 March in Troyan, Bulgaria to Todor Tsvetkov Raevska and Maria Raevska.

Raevska began to study painting, where she met her first painting instructor, Bocho Donev, famous for his excellent landscapes. Donev was a great contributor of Raevska’s artistic development. Raevska often visited master potter, Mincho Hristov, at his workshop in Troyan. He allowed her access to study a process normally reserved for men in Troyan which included the digging of the clay, working the pots, and firing them in the kilns. Hristov taught her the first lessons of ceramics.

A total of 7 monograms are known, with their variations over the years, with which Yova Raevska signed her works, but among the collector's works there are also those that are not signed, but only dated. However, the majority of the works of the ceramist were manually described by her and her husband Boris Gorinov over the years and in connection with the exhibitions held in properly maintained folders and later photo albums. This helps to date and determine the provenance of works without a monogram.

In the mid-1960s she was responsible for three roles. She flourished with her creative ideas and designs by working with materials. Raevska had countless contacts with craftsmen and artisans whom she helped, in most cases, to make small steps towards improving their productions. One of her many tasks included responsibilities as head of the CNSM department tackling problems arising from the implementation of her designs while she continued with her own ceramics. During this time, she was an Associate Professor at the Institute of Art Studies at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. She worked with Ruzha Staykova on the study of reviving Medieval pottery centers in Preslav, Veliko Tarnovo, and Troyan. During 1968-1974, she was Deputy Director of Art Issues and the First Director of the Creative Experimental Model of the Creative Fund of the Union of Bulgarian Artists.

Personal life
In 1944, while studying in Panagyurishte, Raevska married Boris Ivanov Gorinov, a painter colleague from the Art Academy who had been trained and worked in Plovdiv. The young married couple moved to Boris’s native town of Pazardzhik where they lived for more than three years. During this period, the couple established some of their long-lasting friendships. Over the years, Raevska also sat for portraits done by her husband Boris, and later, by her younger son Kras Gorinwho also became an artist himself.

The couple’s first son Lyubomir, was born in 1944. The second, Kras, was born in 1948 after which the family moved to Sofia. Her niece-in-law, Margarita Arnaoudova, was a co-founder of Ballet Arabesque. Raevska’s father, Todor Tzvetkov Raevska, was a farmer and grew plum trees on a large terraced land belonging to his family. Land and cultivation were important sources of income. Raevska’s mother, Maria Dimitrova, was called Mitha, and was Todor’s second wife. Raevska’s maternal grandfather was a blacksmith. One of Mitha’s relatives, Pencho Ikonopisov, was a famous iconographer in the second half of the 19th Century.

Career
Raevska was associated with artistry from a young age under the guidance of skilled masters. She started with learning painting first, and then learned the basics of ceramics art at the workshop under Mincho Histrov. In 1936, she left home to join the ceramics workshop led by Professor Stoyan Raynov at the National Academy of Arts in Sofia. She graduated with distinction from the National Academy of Arts, Sofia after completing her specialization in Ceramics under Professor Stoyan Raynov in 1941.

During her early days of learning painting, Raevska’s notable works are documented in the genre of the tondo. Tondo with horses was produced in her earliest years of study. It features a rendering of two horse heads in profile, their eyes a bright blue. This detailing shows her mastery of a difficult ceramic technique sgrafitto painting, which is one of the most demanding ceramic techniques as it does not allow corrections. The second piece, Landscape with a Bird from 1940, also stands out for the simplicity of the landscape (two trees, a bird, a cloud, the ground) and the liberated elegant primal feel of the painting.

During her years as an art student. In 1937, she designed a logo for the Union of Bulgarian Artists (UBA), known as the “sign with the palette.”

During 1942-1943, she taught in Zla Reka, Vidima, and Troyan and in Panagyurishte in 1944. In 1943, she had her first solo exhibition. During 1945-1948, Raevska taught at a high school in Pazardjik and held joint exhibitions of miniature pine bark sculpture with her husband Boris Gorinov in Pazardjik and Sofia. In 1948, she also became one of the founding members of the Bulgarian Folk Art Cooperative where she remained for nearly a decade until 1958. She completed her artwork at several other sites including mosaics and wall murals at the Bulgarian Embassy in Ankara, Turkey, architectural decorations for the theater in Pazardjik, wall mosaics in the Balkan Airlines Bureau in Sofia (formerly TABSO/BGA), and monumental decorations at the Cultural House in Haskovo. She had gained popularity and became a renowned personality in her field by the late 1950s. In 1960, Raevska left the Bulgarian Folk Art Cooperative and begun working in another institution which later became the Center for New Goods and Fashion (CNSM).

In the mid-1960s she was responsible for three roles. She flourished with her creative ideas and designs by working with materials. Raevska had countless contacts with craftsmen and artisans whom she helped, in most cases, to make small steps towards improving their productions. One of her many tasks included responsibilities as head of the CNSM department tackling problems arising from the implementation of her designs while she continued with her own ceramics. During this time, she was an Associate Professor at the Institute of Art Studies at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. She worked with Ruzha Staykova on the study of reviving Medieval pottery centers in Preslav, Veliko Tarnovo, and Troyan. During 1968-1974, she was Deputy Director of Art Issues and the First Director of the Creative Experimental Model of the Creative Fund of the Union of Bulgarian Artists.

The year 1998 was Raevska’s last public encounter with her audience. She was again awarded the Order of Saints Cyril and Methodius for Dedication to Art. This exhibition showcased her works from different periods. Raevska surpassed traditional pottery through the forced unification of artists and craftsmen and through modernism and industry, and then at the end of her years, she returned to the simplicity of creating and the spiritual connection.

At the end of the 1950s, Yova was already among the outstanding figures in the applied art in Bulgaria, with recognitions and outside, due to numerous appearances in collective exhibitions. The vessels of the "negra" type (see below) - smoked ceramic - are counted as a major contribution of hers; of importance is her successful joint exhibition with Pepa Daskalova-Ikonomova in Plovdiv (1959), where the emphasis falls on smoky and terracotta forms. Raevska shows a total of 120 of her works at this exhibition. Eleonora Avdzhieva, director of the Museum of Folk Art Crafts - city of Troyan, confirms her contributions to the primary formation of the museum ceramic funds for the Troyan museum ceramic collection.

In 1963 - 1965, Yova Raevska together with Ruža Staykova were tasked by the Institute of Fine Arts at the BAS to make a research tour of Troyan and the Troyan villages. In this research, they collected a total of 600 Old Master reports and brought back hundreds of old vessels and pottery molds. Later, this collection remained in the fund of the Museum of Folk Arts and Crafts - City of Troyan. In 1961, Raevska started working at the Center for New Goods and Fashion (CNSM). He left the Central National Museum seven years later and joined the Creative Fund at the SBH as deputy director of artistic affairs at the "Gifts" studio, where he remained until 1974.

At the beginning of the 70s, when the Creative Experimental Model Base (TEMB) of the Technical University was opened, she became its first director.

As a researcher, Yova excels in his work with medieval, especially Tarnovo ceramics and the so-called sgraffito technique. The searches for old Troyan ceramics, which she did a few years earlier with Ruža Staykova and their continuation in the Tarnovo region, resulted in her being appointed as a freelance associate at the Institute of Art Studies at the BAS. During the researches in Pliska, Veliki Preslav, Veliko Tarnovo, he got to know mainly the publications on prehistoric and medieval ceramics, looked for archaeologists for additional clarifications.

Tondo The Last Supper
The panel (90 cm in diameter) in the ceramic mosaic technique is the diploma work of Yova Raevska at the National Academy of Arts. The execution was carried out with porcelain-enamel glazes, the size of the individual ceramic pieces is up to 2x3 mm and in a precise execution of the order. In different sources, the mosaic is dated differently - on the back, in the plaster, the year 1938 and a graphic sign with the initials Y.R. In the monograph by Kiril Krastev, the work is also dated 1938, in B. Pencheva's book it is 1940, Yova herself mentions her graduation in 1941. Violeta Vasilchina's hypothesis is that Yova worked for more than a year on the mosaic, i.e. throughout the 1940s and the first half of the following - until his graduation on June 28, 1941, and this sets the limits of real dating.

Negrà - 50s
These are vessels that Yova Raevska created around the 1950s and called them so herself. They are borrowings from prehistoric and archaic vessels, but also with a current sound. They are mainly decorated with naïve drawings. The ornaments themselves do not have any particular structure or organization. Most often they are scattered over the entire surface. In shape they are small, terracotta, smoky gray to black, loaded with "buckles" or other deformations, sometimes with handles; their profile silhouettes often create associations of a bird. Their impact is due as much to their intriguing plastic shapes and unusual silhouettes as to the even matte velvety gray-black tone enlivened by the slightly shimmering lines of the engraving. The engraving itself is not deeply incised – it is rather the mark of a slightly rounded blade on the still wet vessel.

Two of her "negrà" vessels are particularly impressive. One (1958) is a huge conical thick-walled bowl raised on a massive cylindrical foot, with barely visible splashes of flying doves etched shallowly on its smooth inner surface.

The other (1957) is a large-format vase with a narrow bottom, a voluminous body and a thin neck with an open mouth, titled "Peace is Life". Her entire body is filled with shallowly engraved figural scenes on an anti-war theme - an anti-war demonstration, a protest against the hydrogen bomb, in defense of peace, etc. The "negra" technique is unique to ceramics and remains one of the most impressive pieces of the Yova Raevska collection.

T-shaped ceramic
After the mid-1970s, Yova created an unusual T-shaped vase, on which she stopped her attention longer. The embodiment of this form can be seen in several more works built on the combinatorial principle. It is about a series of forms - pure plastics, which, despite the different names, sizes and plastic solutions, create a common association for mechanical "pivots", from small interior plastics to large park forms (The Great Lighthouse I and II, Saedinenie, Lokomobile, Komin and others). In general, the idea of the interaction of man with the machine, the life of technology as a component of human life and as an object of art then occupies the imagination of the ceramicist and evokes similes, for which the title is usually key as only through it we can understand what content is put into the plastic.

===Significant exhibitions===

Along with a number of solo and collective exhibitions at the local and international level, Yova Raevska makes several appearances that are significant for the Bulgarian history of applied arts.


 * "2,500 years of art in the Bulgarian lands", shown for five years (1957 - 1962) in major European cultural centers, in Belgium, France (Neuchâtel), Italy, FRG, Austria and the USSR (Leningrad).
 * She also participated in the General Exhibition of Bulgarian Applied Art in Czechoslovakia (1959), Bulgarian Applied Art in Belgrade, Yugoslavia (1960), International Exhibition of Women Artists in Budapest, Hungary (1960).
 * The 1965 exhibition in Sofia is of great importance because it shows the relationship between ceramics and archaeology. Inspired by Tarnovo ceramics, Jova Raevska makes an updated collection of dishes with an impressive construction, and a key element is the inclusion of the handle in the body of the vessel itself. This is a special approach that Raevska develops in her future works. "The details gradually fall away and the drawing passes into the conventional," says Bela Pencheva . This shows an even more serious connection of functional objects with art and the conceptual new impulse in art that is creeping behind the walls of the Iron Curtain. This makes Yova's works relevant not only for the time in which they were created, but also to this day.
 * With her works created in the 1960s, in the highly active years of her career, the ceramist participated in International Ceramics Biennales and Exhibitions – in Faenza, Italy in 1966 and 1970s, in Spain in 1968 and 1970s, in Sopot, Poland as well in the 1970s.
 * In 1968, for his 50th anniversary, he made an exhibition and a collection of completely new "chimney" forms - drawn ceramic vessels intended primarily for garden and greenhouse decoration. These are works of art created with the expressive means of ceramics, in which the aesthetic prevails, and the utilitarian in the compositions recedes. Functionality is limited and passes in the direction of the decorative. After this exhibition, a new stage in the artist's development began, in which the forms became increasingly clean, stylized and primary - cylinders, cubes, spheres.

Masterpieces

 * "Brigadier" - Ministry of Foreign Affairs
 * "Peace Vase" - Sofia Airport
 * The Pieta, described by her as a Byzantine mosaic – St. Sofia
 * Within the next few years, she realized several more objects – mosaics and panels in the Bulgarian embassy in Ankara, Turkey ; decorative-monumental decoration of the theater in Pazardzhik, panel-emblem of the TABSO/BGA "Balkan" Bureau in Sofia, decorative-monumental decoration in the House of Culture in the city of Haskovo.
 * Decorative form "Bulgarian" 1965, red clay and colored glaze, sgraffito, 36x11x4 cm (unknown collection)
 * Emancipation Decorative Form 1965, red clay and colored glaze, sgraffito, 54x12.5x7 (unknown collection)

Collections in museums

 * National Art Gallery, Bulgaria
 * Museum of Arts and Crafts, city of Troyan
 * Private Family Collection "The Voice of the Clay", the family of the artist Kras Gorin

Monograms by Yova Raevska
At the moment, a total of 7 monograms are known, with their variations over the years, with which Yova Raevska signed her works, but among the collector's works there are also those that are not signed, but only dated. However, the majority of the works of the ceramist were manually described by her and her husband Boris Gorinov over the years and in connection with the exhibitions held in properly maintained folders and later photo albums. This helps to date and determine the provenance of works without a monogram.

Portraits of Yova Raevska

 * Zlatyo Boyadzhiev (artist)
 * Boris Gorinov – Yova's husband
 * Kras Gorin – Yova's son



External link

 * Vasilchina, Assoc. Ph.D. Violeta, comp., 2018, The Voice of the Clay. Sofia
 * Pencheva, Bela, 1980, Yova Raevska, ed. Bulgarian artist, Sofia
 * Krastev, Kiril, 1967, Yova Raevska, Ceramics, ed. Bulgarian artist, Sofia
 * Krastev, Kiril, composition. Ivo Milev, 2021, History of Bulgarian Fine Art, ed. Sheet
 * Gerova, Darina, Talent is also character. 23.03.1979, in Trud
 * Saychevsky, Petko, Contribution to the renewal of our national tradition, 18.04.1979, Troyanski glas
 * Exhibition in Struktura Gallery, YOVA RAEVSKA (1918 – 2000), 06.06.2019 – 27.07.2019
 * Popsavova, Ruslana, 09.03. 2018, Memories of Yova Raevska, in Troyan Express
 * Filosofova, Tina, 12/11/2018, Queen of clay Yova Raevska comes to life with an exhibition for her 100th birthday, in: Impressio
 * Ilieva, Slavena, 26.11.2018, The National Ethnographic Museum celebrates the 100th anniversary of the birth of Yova Raevska "The voice of the clay" - the ceramics that speak, in: Horizont Program, BNR
 * They show unique works by Yova Raevska, in: Kultura BG, BNT
 * Dimitrova, Svetlozara, 10.12.2018, The voice of clay shows works by Yova Raevska, in: Agrotema, AGRO TV BULGARIA