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Bansko
Art School
 Toma
Vishanov (Molera) is t he founder and one of the most prominent artists
of the school. According to family accounts handed down from generation
to generation, he left for Vienna with a group of caravan merchants
as a young man and stayed there " to learn the craft " . As he returned
to his hometown local people started calling him Molera, from the German
word "Maler" (painter); his son turned that nickname into a surname
(Molerovi). From his direct contact of modern European painting T.
Vishanov was greatly stricken by its interest in all that is evanescent,
capricious and elusive. His attention was focused on the mystery of
human gesture, the nuance of mimic and the graceful pose as a reflection
of delicate emotion. He soften ed the crude "colour sound" and texture
of paint and for the first time in Bulgarian painting addressed the
issue of colour chang ing in the air and space. His icons around the
end of the 18th and early 19th century are easily recognisable with
their striking images lit by inner radiance, the beautiful close-ups
and Baroque arabesques, the gentle and picturesque harmonies and realistic
imaging (the "Uspenie Bogorodichno" ( Assumption of the Virgin ) church
in Bansko; the churches in the town of Razlog, the village of Ossenovo,
the village of Dobrinishte, the village of Boboshevo, the town of Kyustendil
and other settlements in south-western Bulgaria, the altar piece of
the "Sveti Luka" ( "St. Lucas" ) church and the "Sveti Luka" ( "St.
Lucas" ) hermitage in the Rila Monastery, the hermitage in the "Pokrov
Bogorodichen" (Shroud of the Virgin) church).
 Another
representative of the school is Dimitar T. Molerov, the son of Toma
Vishanov, who returned to the more reserved tones of Bulgarian art
and gained enormous popularity, unusual for his time. Bansko masters
stood up for the historisation of old cycles, for expanding the rigts
of church-donors, and also for canonizing national saints. With these
expanded capabilities the school was ready to solve more complex tasks.
The interior and iconostasis of the "Uspenie Bogorodichno" (Assumption
of the Virgin) church in Bansko is convincing proof of that. The Sveta
Troitsa ( Holy Trinity ) church in Bansko is also an example of the
exquisite synthesis between architectural volumes and spaces and wood
carving, between colourful images of Master Velyan Ognev and the icons
by Dimitar Molerov and his son Simeon D. Molerov
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