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In 1969, in the course of his research on the origins of modern art, Andrei Nakov discovered the work of the painter Georges Papazoff (born in Yambol, Bulgaria, in 1894 - died in 1972 in Vence, France) in the reserves of the Katherine Dreyer « Société Anonyme » collection, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, USA.
A Bulgarian artist who worked in Germany before settling in France in 1924, during the twenties and thirties Papazoff had a flamboyant international career, exhibiting in several European countries and in the USA. Remarked upon at an early stage by the writer Henri-Pierre Roché (a friend of Duchamp and Brancusi's agent), Papazoff's work quickly found its way into the major American collections of which Roché was one of the regular advisers.
On his return to France in 1970, A. Nakov went to Vence (Alpes Maritimes), where Georges Papazoff led a secluded life in a house he had had built at the edge of the Grand Place. The friendship that quickly developed enabled A. Nakov to convince the seventy-year old artist to return to the Paris scene, and this culminated in a one-man exhibition at the Galerie de Seine in 1971. The painter died shortly afterwards in Vence. A note in his will requested that the young art historian known in France should write a monograph on his work.
Intense work on the painter's archives was followed in the spring of 1973 by the monograph Georges Papazoff: Franc-tireur du surréalisme, published by the Éditions de la Connaissance in Brussels.
Since then, the defence of Papazoff's work has remained within A. Nakov's sphere of interest. An updated version of the 1973 publication is planned: it will include numerous documents and works discovered over latter years in Bulgaria and in Western Europe, notably a considerable amount of the artist's correspondence.
A retrospective of the artist's work has been envisaged for many years and is now being prepared by A. Nakov. The exhibition is to be presented in several European museums and will have its final showing in Sofia (Bulgaria).
Georges Papazoff : Franc-tireur du surréalisme, Éditions de la Connaissance, Brussels 1973. 