14.10 - National Academy of Arts is founded

On October 14, 1896, the State Drawing School (popularly known as the Drawing School) was opened in Sofia by Decree of Prince Ferdinand and thanks to the active support of prominent artists and public figures such as Konstantin Velichkov, Ivan Shishmanov, Ivan Mrkvichka, Anton Mitov, and others.

As early as 1864, in the newspaper "Savetnik", Nikolay Pavlovich was the first to propose the creation of a Bulgarian drawing school similar to the already existing academies in Western Europe. The drawing school was successively transformed in 1909 into the Art and Industrial School, in 1921 - into the Academy of Arts, in 1951 - into the Higher Institute of Fine Arts "Nikolai Pavlovich", and in 1995 - into the National Academy of Arts.

As students, and later as teachers, the most significant representatives of new and contemporary Bulgarian art passed through its studios, whose achievements determined the scale of Bulgarian artistic culture. The first teachers there were Ivan Mrkvichka - a teacher of painting and director of the school, Anton Mitov - in art history and Boris Shatz - in modeling. The school building on 1 Shipka Street was completed in 1907 according to a design by the Russian architect Alexander Smirnov. Before that, classes were held in private apartments - rooms were rented on Shesti Septemvri, Aksakov, and Oborishte streets.

At the beginning, the drawing school consisted of two departments - the first for drawing teachers, the second for artists of applied arts and for the art industry. Today, the National Academy of Arts also consists of 2 faculties: the Faculty of Fine Arts (Painting, Sculpture, Graphics, Illustration and Book Design) and the Faculty of Applied Arts (Decorative-Monumental Painting, Decorative-Monumental Sculpture, Scenography, Ceramics, Carving, Applied Graphics), with the specialties being divided into bachelor's and master's degrees.

At the beginning of 2017, a new branch of the academy was opened near the pier in the city of Burgas.

The National Academy of Arts continues to be the most authoritative Bulgarian institution for training professional artists in the fields of fine and applied arts, design, conservation and restoration, and art history and theory.