Nikolay Raynov
1889–1954 · Bulgarian · Symbolism
The story
Nikolay Raynov is remembered first as a writer: the author of Bogomil Legends, a 1912 book of stylised medieval tales that made his name, and later of dozens of novels, fairy-tale collections and volumes on the history of art. He belongs among painters because he was also a serious visual artist, and for more than 20 years a professor at Sofia's Academy of Fine Arts.
His art grew from the same soil as his prose, Bulgarian Symbolism, heavy with Byzantine and medieval ornament, mysticism and the occult. Trained first at a theological seminary, he read theosophy, translated widely, and was excommunicated by the Orthodox Church after a novel that retold the life of Jesus. His decorative compositions and book designs carry that mix of the sacred and the strange.
He kept teaching at the academy into the early 1950s. His son, Bogomil Raynov, would go on to become one of Bulgaria's most widely read postwar novelists.
