Hristo Geshanov

AN UNPREDICTABLE PHENOMENON

What can one say about a person who possesses all the talent there is,
if talent can be in any way measured, who can be taught no more
because he seems to be able to do anything and know everything?

Svetla Hristova is exactly that kind of person.

She was born in 1969, in Sofia, Bulgaria, on a very special day - May
the 24th - the brightest day in the Bulgarian calendar, the day of
the Slav teachers Cyril and Methodius who invented the Cyrillic
alphabet. Maybe that's where her first name comes from, maybe this is
the reason for that extraordinary light radiating from her (Svetla
means light in Bulgarian) and from her canvases. She was scarcely
three years old when she started painting. Her mentor in the world of
art at that time was her mother Snezhana Popova, an well-known
artist in her own stead.

At the age of nine Svetla became interested in drawings, and started
illustrating everything she read, including such world-famous books
as "Pippi Longstockling", "Pinoccio", "Gargantua and Pantagruel", Lewis
Carrol's "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass", and the
tales of Anderson and Kipling. From that time onward Plamen Avramov,
the fabulous Bulgarian painter, started playing an important role in
her development. He never tried, however, to lead her by the hand or
to impose any limitations on her choice of style and subject matter.

1980 was a beneficial year for her: she took part in the "Banner of
Peace" International Children's Assembly in Sofia and the "I See the
World" International Competition held in Moscow. She also won the First
Prize at the Children's Art Exhibition in Sofia, winning the same prize
in the same exhibition again on the following year. At that time the
Science Fiction, Heuristics and Prognostics Society arranged her first
two individual exhibitions in Sofia.

Svetla's search for perfection has continued. She painted about 400
pictures for a period of only two years. Then she turned to the
mythology of the A,erican Indian tribes. Her knowledge in this field is
amazing, and the images she creates are really unique in the art
history of the world.

Her third individual exhibition followed in 1983 in Sofia, and led to
her first international exhibition in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, at
the end of that year.

It was as though the myths were a kind of key which helped open her
eyes to the true scope of the extraordinary, the miraculous, the
fantastic. In 1985 Svetla Hristova took part in the 4th Science Fiction
Con. Her devotion to SF has never wavered. It is obviously not just an
infatuation, but an ever-lasting love. And the prize she won at the
National Competition for Fantasy Graphics in 1989 was no surprise for
the connoisseurs of the genre.

All this tremendous artistic endeavour was just the extraordinary
side of an otherwise very ordinary childhood. In 1988 Svetla
graduated from the Cyril & Methodius National High School for Ancient
Cultures and Languages and matriculated in the English Literature
department of the Kliment Ohridski University in Sofia.

Psychologists point out that it is easier for the person of genius to
create a notion of his own, a new way of working, a new concept, than
to repeat what others have done before him. This is characteristic of
everything Svetla paints. The illustrations she did for the Old Greek
textbook are really astonishing, for example. In 1988 Svetla
participated in the Third International Exhibition of Miniatures in
Toronto, Canada, organized by the Del Bello Gallery. Her works made a
great impression and the following year, 1989, she was one of the first
who were invited to take part in the Fourth Exhibition.

Some of her works leave an almost poster-like impression in the
viewer. The strange thing is that her works are at the same time
completely devoid of any poster declarativeness and intrusive
ostentation. This is strange indeed, bearing in mind the fact that
during the last four or five decades what they (" Up There") highly
appreciated in art was exactly the ostentation, i. e. the stressed
attachment to the ideas of socialist realism, the artificial
glorification of the Bulgarian Communist Party, our "First Leader",
etc...

Maybe the reason for her remaining "unnoticed" both by the Artists'
Union and the mass-media is hidden in the fact that Svetla's works
stand apart from this mass kow-towing. It is a fact that almost all
people of genius in our civilization have died unnoticed, not
understood or not properly appreciated. And very probably that is one
of the sine qua nons for being judged a genius. It becomes a problem,
though, when people start thinking that this is the only prerequisite.
Svetla, however, is far from feeling sorry for herself as an
unappreciated and/or misunderstood artist, and, judging from my
conversations with her, it seems she has never even thought of
singing her own praises.

What course will she choose from now on? What new style will her
penetrating intuition create? I dare make only one conclusion: it is no
use divining - Svetla is an unpredictable phenomenon.