The Sculpture Collection of the Ruse Art Gallery consists 170 works created from the 1930s until now. Most of the works in the collection date from the 1980s and 1990s. This wide range allows for an in depth examination of the transformations in the art of sculpture in Bulgaria.
The first sculptures in the collection were purchased with funds from the Municipal People’s Council in 1946 – works by Prof. Ivan Lazarov and Vasil Radoslavov. The 1950-60s saw the government policy for targeted purchases applied through the establishment of special juries and committees – the State Purchasing Committee, the Committee for Culture and Arts of the Ruse Municipal People’s Council and the Ministry of Education and Culture. Works were acquired mainly from the National Art Exhibitions, from private persons, artists and their heirs. The new aesthetics at the time obliged the artists to depict prescribed characters and heroes - revolutionaries, guerrillas, heroes of labor. Typical for that period are the sculptures created by Djoka Radivoevich, Ivan Funev, Marko Markov, Blagoy Iliev, Georgi Radulov, Nikola Terziev-Zhelyazoto and others...