A BULGARIAN PAINTER WITH AN EYE ON THE WEST

The brighter side of life as a Bulgarian artist, says painter Yoni Leviev, includes a government-supported career that is creatively rewarding. The downside is what he describes as the “slow flow of information” between the small Soviet-bloc country and the West.

Still, if his work is an example, the Bulgarian eye toward the West seems to have been more open in recent years than one might expect, even if the West’s awareness of Bulgaria has been limited.

The evidence can be seen in an exhibition of 44 Leviev paintings that will open Sunday at the Mills House Gallery in Garden Grove and run to March 2. Leviev, 51, is one of Bulgaria’s better-known artists. The last exhibit from Bulgaria of any significance to appear in this country was in New York in 1977, when artifacts from the ancient Tracian culture were on display.

Just north of Greece and south of Romania, Bulgaria is roughly the size of Pennsylvania. It is detached geographically and politically from the cultural centers of Western Europe. But Leviev, a talkative, heavy-set man who has accompanied his paintings to Los Angeles, has clearly been influenced by artistic trends in the West in recent decades. The artist’s output is not contemporary by American and European standards. But enough of the works selected to be shown are modern and free enough of ideology to contradict preconceptions that most Americans would probably bring to it.

Several paintings, based on the biblical “Song of Songs,” are clearly erotic. Also, people who have followed news stories about the troubles of Soviet Jews might be surprised at Leviev’s emotional rendering of his father’s grave in a Jewish cemetery. The name Leviev is the Bulgarian version of the Jewish name Levy. Yet the cultural attache with the Bulgarian Embassy in Washington, Chavdar Popov, describes Leviev as one of the country’s most honored painters.

Make no mistake--Leviev vigorously declares his devotion to communist ideology. A book the artist carries with him shows paintings he left home that demonstrate his frequent use of communist symbols and heroes. In one painting, a giant red superhero sweeps away a group of sickly figures representing the enemies of the Russian Revolution; in another, a monument supporting a large bust of Karl Marx stands serene amid another group of ghoulish aristocrats and “fascist hooligans,” as Leviev calls them.

Still, many of his paintings show that he also delves into religious subjects and uses expressionistic and somewhat abstract techniques. A number of these are included in the Mills House Gallery show. “I can express myself as I like,” said Leviev, through an interpreter. For both Leviev’s general artistic freedom and the tolerance for his Jewish background, there are explanations. And they involve some peculiarly Bulgarian circumstances.

Bulgaria has been culturally more liberal than most other Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe, according to people familiar with the country. Starting when it struck a deal with the Nazis that saved the country’s Jews, the nation’s reputation has generally been untainted by anti-Semitism.

A State Department official who knows the country well, but who declined to be quoted by name, said that credit for this more liberal attitude mostly belongs to a woman named Ludmila Zhivkova. The late daughter of the current Bulgarian leader, Todor Zhivkov, she was educated at Oxford University. For about five years before her death in 1981 at the age of 38, she played a key role in fostering a more westernized attitude toward the arts.

Leviev, who describes Zhivkova as having been a close friend, says her cultural policies continue to dominate. He said that an example of Zhivkova’s approach was an exhibit she organized in the national capital of Sofia several years ago, featuring art by Andy Warhol, Louise Nevelson and the artist Christo. He also said that younger artists in Bulgaria are experimenting with more abstract painting styles than would probably be found in the Soviet Union. “People in the West may not want to pay much attention to Bulgaria or think nice things about Bulgaria, but it has been an unusual situation there,” said the State Department official, who spent two years in the country. He said the official reason for Zhivkova’s death was a cerebral hemorrhage, although there were rumors of foul play.

The unusual circumstances in which Leviev paints also stem from the history of Bulgaria’s Jews.

In World War II, Bulgaria was able to maintain some autonomy from the Nazis. It did assist the Nazis’ military campaigns in the region, but also refused to let a large portion of its colony of 50,000 to 100,000 Sephardic Jews be exterminated. After Israel became a nation in 1948, Bulgaria opened its doors to emigration. Most did leave, and fewer than 5,000 Jews remain today. In fact, it was some Los Angeles Jews’ interest in the history of Bulgarian Jewry that resulted in the Leviev exhibition here, according to Garden Grove publicist Barbara Ness, who helped organize the show. In 1981, Ness and a Bulgarian-born associate, Jacob Dvir-Djerassi, worked with some Los Angeles rabbis to arrange a tour to Bulgaria and Israel for about 300 people, mostly Jews from the Los Angeles area. The idea originated with a Bulgarian official, Ness said, explaining that Bulgarians are eager to be recognized for this part of their past.

While in Sofia, Ness met Leviev and they first discussed the Mills House Gallery exhibition. Ness is the gallery’s publicist.

While in this country, Leviev is staying with his brother, Milcho, a self-described “jazz-classical” composer and pianist who is a 15-year resident of the United States and lives in North Hollywood. During a recent interview at a hotel in Hollywood where Leviev’s paintings had a private two-day showing, Milcho, 48, acted as his brother’s interpreter.

“When I started painting, the effect of Stalin was not yet gone,” Leviev said. “Under Stalin, there simply was very little information coming into the country. It was very hard-core, very old-fashioned. They didn’t allow any experimentation, but only the classical style and . . . social realism.”

He said Stalin’s influence in Bulgaria lasted into the mid-’50s, and really waned only after a 1956 party conference in Bulgaria at which cultural liberalization was a topic. That was the year Todor Zhivkov became president. Pointing to several paintings, Leviev said: “There was a time when my career would have been over if I painted that way.”

Certainly, most of the paintings seem innocuous. Many are simple and straightforward pictures of his hometown of Plovdiv, a merchant center that is the second-largest city in Bulgaria. Among the more interesting works is a series based on the style of medieval Bulgarian iconography.

“I want you to understand very clearly,” Yoni Leviev said, through his brother. “These are two different worlds. In Bulgaria, the artist does not have the freedom to paint absolutely anything that occurs to his mind. That is true. But I don’t think you do here, either. . . .”

At this point, his brother picked up the theme. “Over there, there are restrictions on freedom. Everybody knows that,” he said. “But there are limits on your freedom here. For example, they are put there by the music industry . . . the industry always uses labels, so they don’t always recognize what is outside the labels.”

Yoni Leviev, who is an official with the Union of Bulgarian Artists, a government-affiliated organization, said he earns the equivalent of about $25,000 a year from his art. As that money comes from commissions to paint large murals in such public places as state-run schools, union halls and libraries, Leviev is government-supported. “In Bulgaria, artists make more than doctors,” he said.

Few subjects draw as much emotion from Leviev as Zhivkov’s influence on Bulgarian culture. He said it is thanks to her that what he speaks of in Bulgarian as the “Amerikanski avant-garde” has exerted a deep influence on the country’s younger painters.

Asked what benefits he thinks he would enjoy if he were an artist in the West, he said: “I think that perhaps I would have made much more money . . . but there is no way I could live here. I am too connected to a particular place, and without it I would be like a tree without roots.”