ANDREANA DOBREVA
SATURNALIA

HELDENREIZER Contemporary is pleased to present Saturnalia, the latest body of work by London-based artist Andreana Dobreva. Alongside monumental canvases, the artist unveils for the first time her miniature series Saturnalia (2025), which takes her exploration of materiality and mythological imagery to a new level. Following an exhibition project in New York last November, this marks Dobreva’s fourth solo show with HELDENREIZER Contemporary.

 

With eruptive pictorial force, Dobreva unfolds a dense web of art-historical and contemporary references. In Saturnalia, baroque sensuality, religious gesture, and psychological intensity converge to create an atmosphere of excess, intoxication, and ritual. The works oscillate between figurative density and abstract dissolution, with forms cascading across the canvas like lava streams, evoking a tension between desire, violence, ecstasy, and exhaustion.

 

Dobreva’s practice is shaped by a critical inquiry into the relationship between body and power, identity and ideology. In Saturnalia, she engages with images of the body and constructions of masculinity and femininity that have been perpetuated in art over centuries, translating them into a vibrating contemporary vocabulary. The dense materiality, impasto surfaces, and fluid brushwork lend the works an intensity that recalls both the sensuality of Italian Baroque painting and the gestural vigor of the New York School.

 

Andreana Dobreva (*1982, Sliven, Bulgaria) lives and works between London and New York. She initially studied icon painting at the Art Gymnasium in Sliven before completing a degree in psychology and education at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. She then studied painting and graphic arts at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste München under Anke Doberauer and Florian Pumhösl, where she developed her distinctive formal language, and graduated with a diploma in 2019. Her works are regularly exhibited across Europe and North America and have been shown at international fairs including FRIEZE Masters London, TEFAF Maastricht, Paris Print Fair, and IFPDA New York. Dobreva has also held prestigious residencies, most recently the Quinn Emanuel Residency in London (2025) and the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in New York (2024).