Stefan Lyutakov’s sculpture possesses the remarkable quality to live independently, freely and naturally. It vibrates and breathes, merges with space, leaving in there a human touch, filling it with forms, born in the artist’s mind and provoked by artist’s emotions. Sculptor’s ability to organize space and to place his statues naturally into it is due undoubtedly to his good professional knowledge to work with different materials and even more it is due to his gift to subdue matter to his artistic will and purpose. But there is one more very important characteristics of his art. Stefan Luitakov is an artist, free of the restrictions of conventionalities and stereotypes. He stands for his visions and looks for new, unknown territories in sculpture.
His forms live in a peculiar manner and could not be classified. They flourish free and unlimited, develop and populate space with the magic figures of ancient Menades and Satyrs, flowers and totems, united in the impetuous dance of eternal Nature’s transformation. Then suddenly turns to a different direction and from the world of fantasy and myths brings us back to reality, seen, felt and expressed in a wise, but cruel riddle. This complicated, often contradictory, artistic micro-cosmos is pierced by the impulse of dreams, by the rational attitude of knowledge and by the vision of the inmost secrets of Creation.
Diverse in their meaning, Lyutakov’s sculptures differ in their forms as well. They vary from light, open-air, moving, biomorphic forms to heavy, solid monoliths, reminding of prehistoric statues. The wide range of sculptural methods does not spoil the unity and integrity of artist’s style. His sudden and bold compositions coincide with the deliberately sought artistic provocations, referring to different historic periods. Thus his “Last Supper” suggests analogy to contemporary “heroes” and events and his “Axes” are transformed into a complex, unusable, surrealistic apparatus. This “ready-made” of ours unites past and future and brings to mind the thoughts about our origin and aims. This composition expresses the human sadness for the “Lost Paradise” in the techno-epoch.
Each new theme is a challenge and stimulus for Stefan to widen his artistic views and to search for new inexperienced opportunities. There are no limitations in genres or themes for his sculptures. Contrary to logic in sculpture even the rain – the natural phenomenon, through which water passes from one physical condition into another, Lyutakov succeeded to recreate into a composition full of life and sentiments. He uses this play component, when he creates his armour-plates, urns and animals but using it in another context.
The problem of movement Stefan Lyutakov solves in two directions. Since his early works he mastered all known ways to express movement in sculpture – from the position of the body, the gate and the gestures to the architectonic balance of masses and forms. Later, in 1980s he found the possibilities of kinetic elements in sculpture. Nowadays Stefan strings the figures in the composition to emphasize the contrast between the inner strength of the compact form and the expressiveness of the details. The sense of inner tension of forms turns into real movement of sculpture’s components.
Stefan Lyutakov masters precisely not only space but matter as well. His choice of materials depends on his ideas and he succeeds to reveal the most delicate vibrations of bronze figures, the resonance of ceramic forms, the feeling of eternity enclosed in a stone monolith. The figure of “The Horse” is firmly rooted to the ground, but light reflections play on its smooth, glassy surface and remind the nervous shiver of animal’s muscles.
The art of Stefan Lyutakov is mature, wise and complete. It surprises with the power of its suggestions, with its noble ideas and emotions, with the opulence and the expressiveness of the sculptural forms.
Slava Ivanova
(Curator of the exhibition of Stefan Lyutakov the National Art Gallery, Sofia “Personal harbor” – June, 2005)
About Stefan Lyutakov’s Art
Obviously every artist has got his private harbor…Probably in the inner world of each author there is a peculiar place for seclusion and contemplation of impressions, of artistic and life experiences. The coziness and the security of a harbor presume it. This is the inward haven, where the ships of our impressions anchor and lavishly pour out the catch of our kaleidoscopic existence. But on the other hand, other ships, which contain constant artistic concepts, beauty of ruminated over forms and unexpected philosophic prediction, depart from there. Thus the harbor becomes the starting point of a trip without formal post-codes, of a journey around the world in the attempt to meet and touch other people.
This metaphoric approach to the art of Stefan Lyutakov gives us the opportunity to point out some of its important peculiarities, which predestine the pulse of his artistic manifestations. His art searchеs for new plastic decisions – primeval and at the same time pure forms, found in their absolute completeness, a specific primary basis of all such forms /”The Boat”, “The Armour”, “The Horse”/. The second important point is the plastic provocation in findings, initially hiding predicaments for mastering the three-dimensional sculptural image /”Box for Memories”, “Tender Farewell”/. In such works we deal with the relationships and interactions of sculptural forms, rather than with the concrete single form or with the illustration of a life episode. The third significant point is connected with the inspiration of the sculptural structures. In Stefan Lyutakov’s art there is a phenomenal humanistic sense /as a sculptural intervention and as a meaning/, emanated by each of his works no matter how close or how distant from anthropomorphic, zoo-morphic or abstract images they might be. All his sculptures bear the symbolic meaning and the graphic and sculptural accomplishment typical for the initial, neolithic, ancient forms. Thus Stefan Lyutakov achieves along with the synthetic forms and their arrangement in space, the sensation of infinity and of permanence of the artistic message, as if coming from the remotest past. His art is a constant sailing to and fro the private harbor of his artistic process.
Boris Danailov - Director of the National Art Gallery -Sofia
(with reference to the exhibition of Stefan Ljutakov in the National Art Gallery “Personal harbor” – June, 2005)
„Geo Milev once wrote: „All roads lead to Rome.Only one leads to Heaven: the road of Freedom.“ This is how the greatest Bulgarian modernist from the beginning of the century found a virtual expression of art. In the end of the century Stefan Ljutakov masters these same roads to freedom…
Ljutakov’s sculpture predisposes to philosophic interpretations and indulges us in a host of metaphors springing one from another. But with all this complexity and multi layer structure of the Ljutakov's art features a single lucid and pure nucleus: the rich yielding metaphors, unexpected variations of the mind - as if all this intensifies because the sculptor is aware of the simple truth about things.
Physically, Stefan Ljutakov is created uncommonly, too. The red hair, blue eyes and the large figure evoke the images of heathen Cylleni and the disarming smile wins us over with its childish sincerity. Stefan Ljutakov is like a sensitive membrane catching both the rumble of matter and the slightest spiritual vibrations.
The sculptor stirred the spirits with his very debut - his works were bold and shocking, they showed he had what to say and he knew it. Things have gained intensity and softness through the years without giving up this digging nto the essence. Ljutakov prefers bronze, with its rich plastic modulations. He has his own tactile hand. He is aware of the organic of the objects mastering their movements, and that is why hisdeformations are so expressive and precise. And they also feature generous spatial life.This particular space sensitivity perhaps defines his advance to openwork and dynamic shapes. In his recent works the matter seems to be scattering - things are hanging out, flying, swimming and singing. This is how we are overwhelmed by the „Festive gardens“. All these little horses, birds, boats and houses are going around like in a fairground. And the suggestions come naturally - of the Earth’s circumrotation, of the fates and transformations in life. Ljutakov moves along the roads of freedom making his personal and professional discoveries at every moment. To him the person is both alone and never alone. The couple is repeated many times in his plastic works – negative and positive, woman and wife, Cain and Abel. „Cain and Abel“ is undoubtedly one of the most trilling works of the sculptor. We are struck dump by discovering how killer and victim become one. As, perhaps, in every one of us…Actually, everything in Stefan Ljutakov’s universe is engaged in a chain-dance. Shapes, objects and matter merge into one another because after all, God made everything of mud. The energy charge of Ljutakov is as much naturally flowing as it is being guided by his strong intellect and intuition. Therefore, his images are dense and bring to us endless associations. Modern intensification of senses finds in them a key to spiritual totems.
With all these qualities and presence in artistic life Stefan Ljutakov opposes all exhausted imitators or uncivilised pretenders of pseudo-avant-gardism. In the end of the expiring century, when modern is already history and post-modernism tends to cross its threshold, too Stefan Ljutakov has proven that an ever modern art is the living art created by a free artist.“
Rousja Marinska - Director of the National Art Gallery, Sofia
(with reference to the exhibition of Stefan Ljutakov in the Stara Zagora State Art Gallery in 1997)
Stefan Lyutakov pulled up his horse in front of the National Art Gallery. The giant steel figure of the animal – a subject, challenging generations of classic and modern masters, stopped at the right time and on the right place. The motive is not the anniversary of the artist, but the natural consequence of the development and the maturity of this amazing Bulgarian sculptor. The importance of Stefan Lyutakov’sculptures is obvious for Contemporary Bulgarian Art. He formulated and enhanced it distinctly long ago. Mythological and poetical visions in his early highly expressive small forms vividly correspond to contemporary ideas with unusual nerve. Stefan Lyutakov keeps and protects the emblematic release from any convention as his most cherished treasure with his demeanor to be different and to follow freely his own artistic will. During the years his generous artistic inventions turned into works like “The Last Supper”, “Backward Journey”, “Self-portrait with Barrel”, “The Mirror Cross”. His series of one-man shows in the 1990s - a free manifest of his sensitive talent, once again surprised and interested us with his blissful sculptural findings.
Stefan Lyutakov prepared his exhibition at the National Art Gallery longer than an year. He worked earnestly, with inherent passion, profoundness and sincerity. After clearing up his ideas, Stefan shared them with me with a feeling of happiness and confidence. From his few words I understood that he had succeeded in the most important thing – to penetrate and to dominate the integrated artistic space. The sculptor had managed to fill it with energy and meaning, to provoke, to excite and to disturb with his works. True to himself Stefan Lyutakov will show a new version of “The Last Supper” – an everlasting theme with ageless allusions. Naturally the image of the horse will be there again. Stefan Lyutakov interprets his favorite subject in its whole mythological semantic richness. Now he will exhibit it in monumental size as an emblem of his exhibition. It stands as a true metaphor of movement and free spirit, an expression of the pursuit of infinity and in the boundless realms of art. Bon voyage to you free horseman! Hold the reins as tight as ever, hidalgo!
Boris Klimentiev,
with reference to Stefan Ljutakov’s exhibition in the National art gallery, Sofia, 2005
18 May 2005