EXHIBITIONS AND COMPETITIONS
2025 – Solo exhibition – Echoes, Intro Gallery, Sofia
2025 – International Painting Plein Air – Pleven
2025 – 15 years Art exhibition Vrabevo
2024 – Road – Exhibition with Vesko Velev, Painting and Sculpture, Atelier-Gallery Stefan Kotsev, Sofia
2024 – Meetings – National Painting and Sculpture Exhibition, Young Bulgarian Artists, Art Gallery Rayko Aleksiev, Sofia
2024 – Painting Plein Air Malka Jelyazna, Bulgaria
2024 – Biennale Bifronte, Rome, Italy
2024 – Dissonanza, Painting and Sculpture Exhibition, Palazzo Fani, Tuscania, Italy
2023 – National Exhibition Painting and Sculpture
2023 – Young Bulgarian Artists, Art Gallery Rayko Aleksiev, Sofia
2023 – Gallery Dousdebes&co – Collective exhibition, Saint-Emilion, France
2023 – Expresiones – Collective exhibition Galeria Vearte, Alicante, Spain
2023 – Solo exhibition – The Last Ones, Sculpture and painting, Dryanovo Historical Museum
2022 – In the Beginning IV, UBA, Sofia
2022 – Wales contemporary – finalist, Wales, UK
2022 – Chianciano Biennale – Finalist`s exhibition, Chianciano Art Museum, Italy
2022 – 140 years since the birth of Vladimir Dimitrov – the Master, Collective exhibition, Art Gallery Petko Churchuliev, Dimitrovgrad
2022 – Solo exhibition – Еxperienced, Sculpture and painting, Art Gallery Petko Churchuliev, Dimitrovgrad
2021 – National Sculpture Exhibition – In the Beginning is Nature 2, UBA, Sofia
2021 – National Sculpture and Painting Competition, Art Gallery Rayko Alexiev, Sofia
2021 – 50 years – National Exhibition Ludogorie, Razgrad
2014 – National Exhibition of Sculpture UBA
AWARDS
2025 – Sculpting the future, Award for Young Artists, Nova Art Space, Sofia
2024 – National Exhibition Botev`s Land – Award for Young Artist, Municipality of Vratsa, Bulgaria
2023 – Painting Plein air Ilindentzi, UBA, Ilindentzi, Bulgaria
2022 – National Painting Plein air “Dryanovo of Master Kolyu Ficheto – memory and present”, City of Dryanovo prize
2021 – Competition for Monument of Vasil Levski, Yambol, 2nd place
WORKS OWNED BY
Nova Art Space, Sofia
Dryanovo Historical Museum
Art Gallery Petko Churchuliev, Dimitrovgrad
Union of Bulgarian Artists
Art Gallery Ilia Beshkov, Pleven
Private collections: France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Bulgaria
Stefan Kotsev was born on September 8, 1990 in Sofia, Bulgaria.
Bachelor’s degree in sculpture, for the period 2010 – 2014, at Prof. Angel Stanev`s studio. Master degree of acquisition for the period 2015 – 2016 at Prof. Angel Stanev`s studio, Sculpture, NATIONAL ACADEMY OF ARTS, Sofia, Bulgaria.
Contemporary figurative sculptor, painter and visual artist, member of UBA (Union of Bulgarian Artists) since 2018.
“In the aesthetic landscape of modernity, dominated by aggressive imagery, Stefan Kotsev’s sculptural compositions choose the path of silence. The images in his artworks are not familiar characters. They do not fight for our attention, but attract it with the semantic weight of their presence. They do not aim to impress with formal perfection, but to convey emotional states – vulnerability, pain, loneliness, fear, powerlessness.
Kotsev’s sculptures inhabit the borderline between the real and the symbolic. His plastic language seems to be deliberately rough. The human body is tendentiously elongated, broken by the weight of time, reduced to a quiet but powerful expressiveness. He does not strive for portraiture or realism, but for something deeper – the re-creation of different states. The details are deliberately generalized, even as if erased. Faces that do not carry individuality, but a feeling; bodies that do not describe movement, but carry the burden of experience. His figures seem like a shadow from a dream, a remnant of something that was once whole. This fragmentation gives the images a depth and inner tension that make them particularly impactful.
Stefan Kotsev’s art does not tell, but remembers, does not describe, but experiences.”
PhD Boryana Valchanova, curator: Solo exhibition Echoes/Intro Gallery/2025