(b Kyustendil, 1 Jan 1896; d Sofia, 5 April 1961). Bulgarian painter, teacher and critic. From 1915 to 1920 he studied at the National Academy of Arts (Natsionalna Hudozhestvena Academia) in Sofia, in 1921 at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna and in 1922–5 under Hugo von Habermann (b 1849) at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich. During the 1930s he travelled extensively in Mexico and Cuba, where he was influenced by the art of the Mexican muralists and by the colour and vitality of Latin American painting in general. At this time he painted landscapes and portraits in oils, in which he balanced the poetic expression of colours and rhythms with simple and monumental, yet decorative, forms, as in Mulatto Women Picking Citrus Fruit (1934; Sofia, C.A.G.) and Sea Gulf (1940; Sofia, N.A.G.). He became well-known as a painter of portraits (e.g. Boy with a Soccer Ball, 1938; Sofia, N.A.G.) and of still-lifes (e.g. Citrus Fruit in a Green Bowl, 1936, and Still-life with Bottles, 1938). His paintings show his understanding and absorption of several of the trends of modernism prevalent in western Europe in the 1930s. From 1925 to 1940 he was a member of the NATIONAL ART SOCIETY OF BULGARIA and was one of its leading artists. Tsonev was also an art critic and a professor of painting (1945–50) at the National Academy of Arts, Sofia. Many of his works are at the Dimitrov-Maistora museum in Kyustendil.

• Tsonev, Kiril
  • Bulgaria, §XII: Museums, collections and art libraries
  • New Artists’ Society