Vezhdi Rashidov, Bulgarian Sculptor and Former Culture Minister, Dies at 74

Vezhdi Rashidov, the Bulgarian sculptor who twice served as his country's culture minister and went on to become Speaker of the National Assembly, has died at the age of 74. GERB's press office announced that he died early on Friday morning, November 6, 2026. His family later confirmed to Nova Television that he died of a heart attack, Radio Bulgaria reported.

His bronze Beethoven masks are held by the Vatican Museums, and twelve of them stand in a sculpture park in Palma de Mallorca alongside works by Joan Miro, Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky and Eduardo Chillida.

A life that began in an orphanage

Vezhdi Letif Rashidov was born on December 14, 1951, in Dimitrovgrad, to an ethnic Turkish family. The family moved to Haskovo when he was two. His mother, the singer Kadrie Lyatifova, died in a car crash when he was ten, and he spent years in an orphanage.

After Sofia's Secondary School of Fine Arts, he studied sculpture at the National Academy of Art, graduating in 1978. In 1985 he won a residency at the Cite internationale des arts in Paris. Art Dialogue named him best foreign artist in 1988 for his Beethoven masks, and he went on to make more than 60 of them. The last major exhibition of the series, "Beethoven - Masks," brought together 20 masks and nine drawings at his own Vejdi Art Gallery in Sofia in May 2025.

In 2012 he showed five sculptures and 17 watercolours at the Equine Museum of Japan in Yokohama.

In 2002, President Georgi Parvanov awarded him the Order of Stara Planina, First Class,. He became a corresponding member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in 2004.

From city hall to culture minister

Rashidov served on Sofia City Council from 1999 to 2003 under Mayor Stefan Sofiyanski. An ethnic Turk, he was a long standing critic of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms. In the 2009 parliamentary elections he stood for GERB in Kardzhali, becoming the first candidate in many years to win a seat there from outside that party, and became culture minister in Boyko Borissov's first government when GERB won the election. He held the post until the government resigned in 2013.

He returned to the ministry in November 2014 in Borissov's second government and stayed until January 2017. He regarded the opening of the National Gallery's Square 500 in central Sofia in May 2015 as his greatest achievement as minister.

He chaired the Culture and Media Committee for many years and served as Speaker of the 48th National Assembly from 2022 to 2023.

Controversy and a return to the studio

His outspoken remarks often drew criticism. In 2001 he was briefly detained after a scuffle with a police officer outside Sofia City Hall. In August 2023, during a parliamentary debate on changes to the Protection from Domestic Violence Act, a live microphone picked up obscene remarks he made about people in the chamber. On August 7 he stepped down as chair of the Culture and Media Committee and resigned from GERB's leadership. He apologised and left politics on September 1, 2023.

After politics, he returned to his studio. At the end of 2025 he opened a Christmas exhibition at the Bulgarian News Agency, called The Tree, with 60 new watercolours and drawings. He summed up its theme in one line: "We are born, we grow up, we grow old and we go, and after forty days no one remembers us."