Toward eternity, Katya. . Fresco on hardboard. Cm 81,50 x 60,50. Signature and dated 1949 upper right. Bibliography: Plamena Dimitrova Racheva, Boris Georgiev of Varnia, Kibea, 2006, pp.84-135.This painting is an allegory of the death of the artist's sister Katya. He has painted her soul floating freely in space. The hands look somehow separate, as if they have a life of their own. This is no coincidence: the hands were in fact painted later, from life, with the artist's adopted daughter Virginia as the model. Katya's face has a blissul expression, and her eyes are closed, as if turned inward, towards the liberation of the long-suffering soul. In the distance, a stormy sea symbolizes life, a poetic return to the artist's birthplace.According to Professor Vassil Stoilov, this painting belongs to Boris Georgiev's later works; however, a description of it can be found in Geoirgiev's letter to Katya's classmate and friend Aspasia Doumanova. In that letter, the artist explained that he had created this work from a sketch done at Katya's death bed. In his notes, he wrote: "It depicts my unforgettable sister Katya who died in Florence at age 19, during World War I, in 1917, after we had been compelled to leave the Alps by Trentino ( where our life had been happy) as they became the theatre of war atrocities. This sacred, extremely kind and talented creature died of sorrow over the immense injustice, horrors and barbarian wars in the world. In the last minutes of her life, her eyes already closed, she sensed that I was crying over our separation and she made an effort to look at me for the last time and said gently: " Do not cry, brother, I am now happy to be in the abode of goodness and eternal harmony which we sought in vain in this world". She then closed her eyes forever, with an expression of bliss and relief from suffering on her face. Crying, I made an effort to draw a small sketch of her expression, from which I later painted this work, "Toward Eternity". This loss is the greatest sorrow in my life, and it will follow me to the end of my days. The small sketch has been preserved in the artist's archive. It shows Katya's face in profile on her death bed. Measuring 10x5 cm, it is done on rough yellowish paper, and has been slightly damaged and repaired.Katya's spirit with a wreath of flowers in her hair can be seen in a 1935 drawing, where she is depicted together with the artist, as well as in "The wanderer and his sister", "Portrait of the Sela Family", (1924) "Meeting with Pariahs in India" (1935), and in two drawings in colour pencils and tempera on paper, both replicas of "Meeting with Pariahs in India" (1941). Boris Georgiev drew a number of sketches in preparation for the painting "Toward eternity".They show the stages of the image's idealization to its iconographic crystalisation as a trascendental vision.The painting is purported to exist in two version, the second one probably painted in the 1950s.About the latter Professor Vassil Stoilov writes that it is executed in the artist's typical fresco technique using a special primer, adding that the artist's last works are not significantly different from earlier ones and even show similaritites with the subject matter of the Alpine cycle. He mentions "Toward Eternity" as a typical example: "a ghost flying in the universe, with drapes instead of wings fluttering behind the impetuous girl's shoulders". . Frame present