Exhibition wall texts
Quote at the entrance
In 1924, I went to spend the summer at what was then the favourite spot of Kazanlak locals: Borushtitsa station. […] It was usual for people from Kazanlak to walk out to the station, to see the trains in and off. One day I went too. Ivan Milev stepped off the train – I had known him since 1920, when he held his first exhibition in Sofia. […] One afternoon we decided to walk to the village of Banzeroto, east of Borushtitsa, tucked behind a hill in a steep, wooded ravine, and made up of some fourteen houses. We talked about art the whole way.
Lost in conversation, we drew close to Banzeroto without noticing the black hail cloud above us. It cracked, and heavy hailstones began to fall. We dashed at once for the houses, jumped a fence and took shelter under a lean-to. It was here, for the third time, that I saw the great talent Ivan Milev had revealed to me.
The owner of the house came out, shook our hands and said we must be holidaymakers. The hail grew heavier. He immediately snatched up an axe, ran out into the yard and stood it blade-up to cut the hail, while Ivan Milev cried out: ‘do you see this superstition? I shall put it on canvas!’
I asked him how he meant to embody it on canvas, and he replied: ‘once I’ve done it, you’ll see.’
He was trembling with inspiration after that, and went on: ‘I shall also put on canvas the people’s belief about the “Feverish Well” in Muntova Azmak, in Kazanlak. The sick go there, splash their hands, faces and feet with the cold water, tear off a scrap or thread from their clothes, tie it to a blackthorn bush, and believe they will be healed.’
‘And I shall put on canvas, too, the belief about Krali Marko’s footprint at Buzovo Kale.’
‘Do you know’, he said to me, ‘the “Pavel Bridge”, thirty-four kilometres from Kazanlak? There is a legend that when Master Pavli was building the bridge, he walled a young bride into its foundations, and that on quiet nights passers-by have heard her cry: “Pavle, Pavle…”. I shall put that legend on canvas too.’
I looked for these four subjects at the retrospective exhibition held in Kazanlak some years ago, but found only Krali Marko on Horseback.
— Dechko Mateev (1972)
Chavdar Mutafov quote
What, then, are art and Native Art? — Let us call it: the fantastical.
[…] it gives us its very best: a peaceful world, at once familiar and fantastical […] an optimistic world in which things and people are bound together in decorative visions — sometimes barbarically bright, sometimes sentimentally tender, but always distinctive.
From this world comes Ivan Milev’s Krali Marko, laden with every splendour of the provincial imagination – that village hunk, for whom no splendour is enough, naively exaggerated and still endlessly fantastic, with an untamed and inexhaustible tangle of hair like a wildflower garden of tones and colours.
— Chavdar Mutafov (1926)
Baba Marta & Shumi Maritsa panel
In Bulgarian epic, among his other guises, Krali Marko is often shown doing battle with various demonic beings—samodivi, hali, serpents and the like—in order to restore waters they have dammed. Water is the thread linking three of Ivan Milev’s paintings: Krali Marko, Baba Marta and Shumi Maritsa [Maritsa Rushes], all three painted in 1926.
Marko’s duel with the supernatural being is preceded by a want on his part, expressed as a lack of drinking water or a lack of order on earth; by releasing the withheld waters, he restores order and lifts the prohibitions the creature has imposed. One of the many songs about him tells how he cannot find water to drink, or to water his horse, and: ‘good hero Marko lay down, and lay down in heavy oblivion’ — a state which Radost Ivanova describes as ‘equivalent to a provisional, temporary death’. The hero is saved, however, by a bird that brings him water, thereby helping to restore order: the flow of waters, of rivers, and the renewal of nature’s life-giving forces.
This is where the connection lies with calendar-seasonal myth, and with the symbolism of annual rebirth in spring and summer after the stagnation of winter.
The ritual send-off of winter and welcome of spring takes the form of a cycle of spring festivals. The first of these—the first of March—was, before the adoption of the Julian calendar, the first day of the year and was marked as a New Year’s holiday; to this day it remains associated with the arrival of spring and with Baba Marta. Because of the parallels in ritual and belief that her appearance shares with the Marko epic, Radost Ivanova defines the two as ‘the male and female hypostases of one and the same figure’.
Baba Marta is a distinctive figure in Bulgarian folklore, and one of the few in it with an entirely “pagan” character. Christianity has never managed to influence her image, nor to shift the date of her feast day or the rituals attached to it, which have no “Christian motivation”. According to Vihra Baeva, Baba Marta is heir to a female mythic figure tied to the chthonic principle, fertility and marriage. Her image points back to a female deity of the Mother Goddess type, bound up with earth and water.
Bulgarian folklore knows the legend of the old woman who, in defiance of a prohibition, went up into the mountain to graze her goats. Baba Marta grew angry. She borrowed three winter days from her brother Malak Sechko and froze the old woman along with her goats. From the stone into which she was turned, water began to flow. According to another version of the legend, it is Baba Marta herself who, an ordinary village woman mistaking the season for spring, goes up into the mountain to graze her goats. It turns extremely cold, however, and she is turned to stone, from which water afterwards flows.
According to Radost Ivanova, this is an analogous expression of Krali Marko’s “temporary epic death”, which she also identifies in the ritual burning of straw, or of the “marta”, and by extension of everything old and unneeded, so that the old may be reborn as new: straw into grass, stone (or petrified water — ice) into water, so that vegetation may spring up, fertility return, and life renew itself.
This connects directly with etymological research into the names Marko, Marta and Maritsa, according to which the names Marta and Marko both derive from the root “mar-” , meaning “water” — as does the name Maritsa, which corresponds in turn to the Latin mare, “sea, seawater”.
And although at first glance the painting Shumi Maritsa does not carry the same symbolic tie to water (its connection being rather more directly to the painting’s subject) we can still look for parallels in the important place water holds within the ritual system. In the Bulgarian worldview, water (sea, lake, river) is a passage to the other world, and crossing the boundary between the two worlds is bound up with crossing a body of water (as in the belief that the dead must cross a river). Ivanichka Georgieva examines the symbolism of bridges, such as the arched form we may take the shape behind the three figures to represent, arguing that passing over a bridge above running water is semantically equivalent to passing into another world, to making contact with the other world; something we might read here as much as the calendar-seasonal transition, or the theory of “temporary epic death”.
Text accompanying the painting Krali Marko
Researchers and folklorists have often puzzled over how so middling a historical figure as Krali Marko could come to capture the imagination of the South Slavic peoples and become the central hero of their epic. And yet as early as 1878, Konstantin Jireček noted that ‘from Istria to Constantinople, and from Ioannina to Varna, one would scarcely find a single person to whom the name of Marko is unknown
Who is Krali Marko?
His father, Vulkashin, came from a boyar family and proclaimed himself King of Serbia, ruling over Prilep, Prizren and Skopje. Yet the works of Mihail Arnaudov and Ivan Shishmanov cite evidence, drawn from various chronicles, that Krali Marko was also known as a “Bulgarian prince“, a “Bulgarian king“, a “Bulgarian“ [bugarin], and even as ‘the last despot or prince and lord of Bulgaria, or of Upper Moesia’
By pushing certain figures into the background and attributing the deeds of older heroes to Krali Marko, the people laid the foundations of his epic and his mythology, enriching his image with ‘countless traits that have nothing to do with historical truth’ and, at certain moments, carrying him off into ‘the realm of pure fantasy’. Marko’s figure absorbs a range of traits from the heroes of pre-fourteenth-century epic songs, eclipsing the images of his actual contemporaries and establishing itself in folk memory for centuries to come.
The folk singer gives his new hero a variety of names—Krali Marko, Marko Bulgarcheto, Marko Kralevik, Marko the Delibashia, Marko the Good Hero, Marko of Prilep, Dimni Marko and others—along with a thoroughly contrary nature.
Ivan Milev’s Krali Marko should be read as a composite image of his various incarnations across the heroic epic, a reading suggested both by the absence of narrative and by the absence of any other figures in the painting. It stands as a kind of portrait of Krali Marko and his horse, setting out to show the world their courage and strength.
Central table — left (Thracian Horseman relief)
This account would not be complete without a formal look at the compositional solution Ivan Milev chose for depicting the group of Krali Marko and his horse.
We will trace a few reference points here, the first pointing us towards the iconographic type of St. George — a saint who appears often in Ivan Milev’s paintings (The Legend of Mount Athos, The Hero, Wedding). As noted in A Dictionary of Terms in Verbal Folklore: ‘the image [of Krali Marko] shares a number of similarities with epic heroes of antiquity and with various mythological figures of warrior-protectors, and traces of the image of the Thracian Horseman (Heros), widespread in the Balkans in antiquity, can be found at its root.’
In her study The Restored Water (A Characterisation of the Mythological Layer of the Epic Song Cycle on Krali Marko), Radost Ivanova points to “Marko Kraljević’s dragon-slaying” as a motif attached to the hero across the various songs about him, one that links him to traditional dragon-slaying narratives. As we know, in the legends of St. George he too is a dragon-slayer, doing battle with a dragon, lamia or hala that has locked away the waters — and it is precisely here that we find an overlap with the epic songs of Krali Marko. Another point at which we can trace this connection is in certain Christmas carol narratives, in which St. George comes upon three chained gangs of ploughmen, diggers and shepherds held captive by a samodiva, and frees them – just as Krali Marko frees three chained gangs of slaves.
The other reference point lies in the visual compositional similarities we find in the ancient votive tablets of the Thracian Horseman (Heros) already mentioned, which in certain churches, chapels and household icon-corners are received and venerated as images of St. George. To illustrate this, we show one such votive tablet from the sanctuary near the village of Viden, held at the Iskra Historical Museum, Kazanlak.
Central table — right (song excerpt + painting details)
Marko of Prilep roams and wanders,
roams and wanders through the borderlands…
He has saddled his dappled horse,
his dappled horse, his stout horse,
his stout horse, the mountain-breaker;
he has set upon his head a sable kalpak,
on the kalpak as many as three mirrors,
and above them peacock feathers;
he has twisted his dark moustache,
one moustache into three black tufts;
he has darkened his falcon eyes,
and above them his leech-black brows
like the black wings of swallows;
he has girded on his bending sabre,
that bends twelve times over,
that rides hidden in the horse’s mane,
and that cuts through trees and stone.
And to the saddle, God help him, he has bound
his heavy mace,
that weighs six hundred oka;
in his hand he holds that war-spear,
slender and tall as an aspen;
he has thrown over himself his shaggy cloak,
black as a dark cloud.
Wherever Sharatz, his good horse, sets foot,
be it shale or standing rock,
he sinks the horse in to the knee […]
— excerpt from the song Krali Marko Loses His Strength (Sveti Kliment Library, vol. II, 1889–1890, book VIII, p. 165)
The battle gear of Krali Marko that we find in the song is the “bending sabre”, the “heavy mace” bound to the saddle, and the “war-spear“. In folk tradition, a „bending sabre” is understood as a thin sabre able to flex without breaking. In the text it is hidden in the horse’s mane. In the painting we see neither it nor the spear depicted, though we might, with a fair degree of licence, say that part of it emerges from the horse’s saddle. That said, the triangular element visible in the painting recalls instead the tip of the staff in another of Milev’s paintings, Powers. The mace, however, with its clear, decisive volume and rounded top, is easily made out and stands as the painting’s compositional centre. It is bound to the saddle, exactly as the song describes.
Marko’s dress, as described in the song, is a „shaggy cloak” [guna kabanitsa], in which he darkens like a storm cloud. A guna is a rough outer garment of the sheepskin-coat or cloak type, likely brought to the Balkans by the Iranian Scythians. Given the richness of the decoration on the outer garment worn by Krali Marko in the painting, however, we might suppose it to be instead a chepken — a thick, sleeveless outer garment; a chopken, a yamurluk-cloak, a mantle, an epancha, or the so-called winged waistcoat.
In its heroes and saints, Bulgarian folk mythology also endows the dragon-slayer himself with dragon-like traits. According to Ivanichka Georgieva, in Bulgarian heroic epic the hero (Krali Marko, Relyo) is gifted with extraordinary strength and with dragon-like features – “wing-markings” on his back and under his left arm.
How much of the landscape depicted is real, and how much is a conceit built from the artist’s imagination, we can only guess. What does stand out, however, is the rock formation: stones on the left-hand side, likely those Marko threw to test his strength, and an arch-like form on the right.
Gatya Simeonova’s research offers one possible explanation for this landscape: ‘On the northern slope of the Kumanitsa massif (another morphological unit within the body of the Balkan range), in the area known as Stenito (a ridge running down from Kumanitsa’s central, sharp crest towards the rocky valley of the River Cherni Osam), lies the so-called Krali Marko’s Hole. […] it takes the form of a vast underground chamber, almost perfectly circular, its walls converging bell-like towards a large round opening above. The eastern wall is breached […] forming an imposing natural rock arch.’
It is worth noting here that 1925 saw the publication of Angel Karaliychev’s book Krali Marko in the Folk Songs, which included an illustration by Sirak Skitnik also depicting a rock arch, though this is likely a reference instead to the rock formation known as “The Ring”, near Sliven.
In fragments of Karaliychev’s travel diary, published in 2022 in the journal Kultura, we read: ‘Past Ambaritsa, the mountain ridge of Kumanitsa runs off to the right. Four hours on lie Marko’s Mill and Marko’s Tables. It was from these “tables” that the hero hurled his mace after the Turks who had abducted his sister. The mace fell on Kumanitsa and broke through the Hole. The whole region shook, and water burst forth.’
In the song, Marko wears a kalpak set with mirrors and peacock feathers; in Milev’s painting, he is shown bare-headed, with long, curling, golden hair. Art historians have raised the question of self-portraiture in Milev’s work — he often “weaves” his own likeness into his paintings, with their ‘stylised curling head and sharply cut decorative profile’. Here we might borrow Professor Milena Georgieva’s conclusion, reached in connection with other works by the artist: ‘always the same fair head, with its curled, stylised locks like a ram’s horns – an association with the rural origins and livelihood of Milev’s family’.
The name of Marko’s horse appears in numerous variants—Sharkolia, Sharko, Sharkoliyche, Sharalia, Sharzalia, Shara konya pelivana, Gazibara, Troshigora and so on—deriving from the root shar, meaning “dappled or mottled horse”. According to folk legend, Marko captures him in the mountains; after a wild, three-day chase, the horse yields to the hero, and white hair grows over the places where he was wounded, so that he becomes dappled. In folk tradition, the image of Sharkolia is heavily hyperbolised, endowed with the supernatural, demonic qualities of creatures such as the dragon, the lamia and the hala. He is described as a “six-winged” horse, sparks flying from his hooves, white foam falling from his mouth, blue flame issuing from his nostrils, and lightning from his eyes. This has led researchers to define him not simply as an ordinary winged horse, but as a complex composite of metaphorical images drawn from various mythical creatures, one connected also to serpent symbolism.
Without doubt, the most striking part of Ivan Milev’s painting is the emerald-and-gold hindquarters of the horse, recalling a peacock’s tail, of which Alexander Stamenov writes that ‘the horse is clothed in garments for which every colour available on the palette barely sufficed’. The motif of the coiled golden locks in Krali Marko’s hair recurs here, culminating at last in golden feathers into which are woven some of Milev’s favourite triangular motifs.