The period after the First World War was especially complicated for Bulgarian culture. In an effort to overcome a well-known national complex of cultural backwardness, the country’s “accelerated development”11 feverishly tried to catch up with models proposed by advanced countries. The urgent need to accumulate and absorb the achievements of a developed Europe was an inevitable historical reality after centuries of cultural isolation. An essential distinguishing feature was the coexistence of opposing artistic models which were deprived of the opportunity for a natural and full development, thus, failing to ever reach maturity and creative exhaustion.12 (fig. 4-5) It is in this respect that the period between the two world wars was among the most dynamic in the Bulgarian history. Although the twenties were a period of eclectic political and social dynamics, not just in Bulgaria but also in a pan-european, post-world war context, they were also a time of hectic artistic life, with a burst of exhibitions, competitions, professional associations and the creation of many publications.13 The twenties also marked the first time when modern ideas made their way into Bulgarian architecture via Bulgarians educated in Western Europe (there was no academic architectural school in the country until 1943). Nevertheless, they were immediately presented with an insufficiently developed and unstable economy, restless and changeable political life, and a rapidly emerging culture - forming a complex moment within the Bulgarian historical contingency.14 The acceptance of modernism did not have its own national basis of origin and development, thereby if we return to its three main facets - technical progress, artistic avant-garde and social reform ambitions - it is not difficult to establish their insufficient completeness in Bulgaria. (fig. 6-7)
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11 Boyadzhuev Konstantin, Classic and Romantic in Contemporary Bulgarian Architecture, (Arhitektura, 2000) (In Bulgarian) p. 28 12 Ibid., p. 83. 13 Luben, Architecture in Bulgaria, p. 43. 14 Lyudmil Andreev, The Western functionalism and Its Influence on Bulgaria, (LIK, 1988) (In Bulgarian) p. 10.
