(b Yambol, 2 Feb 1894; d Vence, Alpes-Maritimes, 23 April 1972). Bulgarian painter and writer, active in France. In 1913–14 he studied landscape gardening in Prague and Germany. At the beginning of his painting career he was strongly influenced by German Expressionism and, after having his first exhibition in Bulgaria at the Trapko Gallery, Sofia (1919), he arranged for a second one (1922) in Berlin. In 1923 he lived and exhibited in Geneva and from 1924 he moved permanently to France. He became a prominent artist in Paris and was, according to the French critic Jean-Paul Crespelle, one of the forerunners of Surrealism. His first works done in France are painted in a form of ‘geometric’ Surrealism composed of imaginary triangular shapes symbolizing the human body and its spiritual status. Gradually his works became more fully modelled and more colourfully intense as he began to move away from the expressionist tendencies of artists such as Paul Klee and Max Ernst. He experimented with the techniques of Cubism, Tachism and abstract art while at the same time retaining his colourful palette and keeping a reference to the figure. His paintings are done in series, each of which has a dominant theme (e.g. Magic Figures, c. 1933; Stockholm, Nmus.; Circus Dogs, c. 1948; Geneva, Petit Pal.; Gladiator, 1955; Paris, priv. col.). Some French critics have likened his work to that of the Fauvists André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck and have noted that he was friends with members of André Breton’s circle of Surrealists. Breton himself, however, pointed out that the Slavic spirit and the traditions of Bulgarian art were a formative influence on Papasov’s work. From 1960 he lived and worked in Vence, in southern France. He was also the author of several books of reminiscences.