Sculptor Vezhdi Rashidov has died after an illness, his family said today. The farewell ceremony will be held on Thursday, 12 November, at 11:00 at the Ivan Vazov National Theatre.

Rashidov was born in Dimitrovgrad on 14 December 1951. His mother, the folk singer Kadriye Latifova, known as the "Nightingale of the Rhodopes", died in 1962, when he was 11. He then lived and studied at the orphanage in the village of Studen Kladenets, in the Haskovo region.

He finished the Iliya Petrov School of Fine Arts in Sofia in 1970. He studied sculpture at the Academy of Arts under Prof. Dimitar Daskalov and graduated in 1978. From that year he showed his work at all national exhibitions and at major shows abroad.

In 1985 he won a competition for an artist's residency at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris and moved to France. He held more than 50 exhibitions in Bulgaria and abroad, including in Russia, Poland, Hungary, Spain, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Kuwait, Japan and India.

Rashidov's works are in almost all galleries in Bulgaria, as well as in museums and private collections abroad. They include the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the Arsenale in Venice, the Ludwig Foundation in Cologne and the national galleries in Yerevan and Ankara.

He made the statuettes for the Sirak Skitnik awards of Bulgarian National Radio, the Golden Rose at the Bulgarian film festival in Varna, the Interior Ministry's Police Officer of the Year and the Ministry of Education and Science's Pythagoras award. He taught at the Academy of Arts for ten years and has been a corresponding member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences since 2004. On 1 October 2021 he opened a gallery in Sofia under his own name, "Vezhdi".

In 1997 he joined the Public Council on Culture to the president, and from 2002 he sat on the president's Council on Spiritual Development. From 1999 to 2003 he was a councillor on Sofia City Council. He was culture minister from 27 July 2009 to 13 March 2013 and again from 7 November 2014 to 27 January 2017.

In 2011, during a working visit to France, he received a medal from the Louvre. At his meeting with the museum's director general, Henri Loyrette, it was announced that Bulgaria would present an exhibition in the new Byzantine department. In April 2015 the Louvre opened the exhibition "Epic of the Thracian Kings", with more than 1,600 items from 17 Bulgarian museums, organised with the Ministry of Culture.

Rashidov was an MP in the 41st, 42nd, 43rd, 44th, 45th, 48th and 49th National Assembly. He was speaker of parliament from 21 October 2022 to 2 February 2023. Between 2021 and 2023 he sat on the GERB executive committee.

On 9 August 2023 he resigned as chair of the Culture and Media Committee and as an MP, left GERB and quit politics. Parliament voted to accept his resignation on 1 September that year.

His honours include the Order of the Stara Planina, first class, from 2002, and the title People's Artist of Turkey. On 15 February 2014 he became the first Bulgarian artist to win the Critics' Award at the CALL`ART international contemporary art exhibition in Venice. His early awards include the Vatican's Gold Medal in the name of Dante Alighieri (1981) and first prize at the Biennale of Humour and Satire in Gabrovo (1983).

As minister, he organised Armenia Days in Bulgaria. Together with the artist Georgi Trifonov, he donated the money from their joint exhibition in India and Paris to victims of the 1988 earthquake in Spitak. In April 2019 Armenia's ambassador to Bulgaria, Armen Sargsyan, gave him a certificate for this help. He was also an honorary citizen of Armenia.

He has been an honorary citizen of Kardzhali since 21 October 1996, of Madan and Dimitrovgrad since 11 August 2003, of Pravets since 3 October 2008 and of Sofia since 24 July 2014.