“A person accumulates over the years. I was born during the gas era of gas lamps, lived through the advent of electricity, witnessed the atomic age and the conquest of space. Can you imagine what that means for a lifetime, and how I could possibly not change in the process? The far side of the moon is a fact, Jules Verne has long been a reality, and the Earth is already different. This cannot but affect one’s perception of the world. The way in which you dip your brush into the paint now can no longer be the same…”^[1]

Dechko Uzunov, in a 1983 interview

Dechko Uzunov’s work spans more than six decades, during which several parallel lines of creative searching, of experiments in ideas, forms, techniques, colours, and compositions were always flowing. Throughout all his creative decades, he transformed the material into an artistic vision. If there is any difference between his early and his later years, it is not in a weakening of strength, but in the fact that after experiencing the power of satisfaction from his innate gift in art, its forms, hues, and rhythm, he preferred to turn to simpler and more challenging things. It is as if the circle of his art was gradually closing. His landscapes grow distant, becoming unattainable. His nudes gradually turn their backs on us; human images are like visions, in order to finally transform the world into cosmic colours and lights. During the last decade of his creative journey—from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s—Uzunov created large-format paintings, watercolours, sketches, and drawings in which he depicted cosmic matter; it is light, movement, and rhythm. Space is recreated through expressive or more delicate formulations, and the imagination deciphers various celestial objects such as stars, comets, planets, and galaxies, pulsating in various colours and shades in the of blue and red ranges, while white and black are an accent that differentiates the idea of ​​movement. The interaction between them builds an opposition of light and darkness, as well as the idea of ​​the infinity of the Universe.

The theme of the Cosmos in Dechko Uzunov’s work, both in the watercolour series and in one of his last oil paintings, called Detente (Cosmos, 1983), reveals his desire to withdraw from the visible, transforming the Cosmos into a philosophical interpretation of spiritual ascension. The Universe becomes the sought-after abstract reality, a place for the contemplation of the vast cosmic space, in which artistic imagination and the spiritual aspiration for infinity meet.

[1] A. Dzurova, “The Artist Is Born in Liberation. Interview with Dechko Uzunov” [in Bulgarian]. Literary Front newspaper, 19.05.1983.