Georgi Velchev

Georgi Velchev was born in 1891 in Varna. He entered the Art and Industrial School in Sofia in 1910 together with Hristo Kavarnaliev, Kiril Dyulgerov and Yordan Pindikov, studied in Ivan Markvichka and Stefan Ivanov's calsses. During the First World War he became a military artist at the Headquarters of the First Army: he was captured and taken to France. After the war, in 1920, he completed his studies. From 1920 to 1922 Velchev lived in Paris. In 1923 he resided in Germany - in Munich, Berlin, Bremen. He has well-received exhibitions in Karlsruhe and Wiesbaden, paints in the mountains of Tyrol, and visits Italy. He was invited by the famous symbolist and expressionist Heinrich Vogeler to the famous art colony in Worpswede near Bremen. From 1924 to 1931 he was in New York. In the beginning he earned his living as a gardener and factory worker, but he did not stop painting. After that he returned to Bulgaria, to his hometown of Varna, where he died in 1955. After his death, his brother Vladimir Velchev, who lives in the USA, and his sister Pavlina Velcheva decided to donate his native house in Varna and it was turned into a museum in 1961.