The data prize sculpture

While the nominations for the Dutch Data Prize arrive, artist Tjavdar Iliev is busy in his workshop putting the final touches to the polyester mould for the bronze sculpture that the winner will receive.

A mould is made of the sculpture’s design – a kind of three-dimensional negative – which in turn is filled with wax. The wax model is then taken to the bronze foundry, where it is covered with ceramic layers. The ceramic is heated, the wax removed, the bronze poured into the ceramic mould and – after it has cooled and been released from the mould – plated (coloured) and placed on a pedestal.

Tjavdar Iliev, born in 1950, is originally from Montana, a small town in the north-west of Bulgaria. After completing pre-university education, he studied at the Academy of Fine Art in Sofia, where he specialised in monumental sculptures. He was appointed art advisor to the Bulgarian government immediately after he finished his university course. In those early days, he was commissioned to make over thirty – sometimes gigantic – monumental sculptures. These works of stone, concrete, marble and aluminium are located on large squares, at banks and in schools and government buildings across Bulgaria. Since 1990, Tjavdar Iliev has worked and lived in the Netherlands and has a workshop in Amersfoort. As a foreign artist, he is slowly but surely receiving the recognition one would expect for the very high quality of his work.

Some of his work is commissioned by large companies: Centraal Beheer, Achmea, FBTO, Avero, M&I/Partners and Staalbankiers are amongst his clients. Besides self-initiated work, he has also made a rich diversity of bronze statues and sculptures for private clients.

The balance in the figuration of statues and sculptures is achieved using a combination of lines, which sometimes cross one another in amazing ways. The variation that is created by the spatial effect often produces very surprising results. Ilievs’s approach makes the creation of his statues a long and intensive process. The creative idea and technical design and the traditional focus on perfection require an enormous amount of attention and time.