Born in Strumica, Macedonia, in 1959 and living in NYC since the early 80’s. After attending the School of Applied Arts in his country, he went on a scholarship to the American Academy of Art in Chicago (1976). Later on, he was invited to attend the National Academy of Design, where he was awarded a scholarship (1981). Ever since, he has participated in numerous one-man and group shows in the US and Europe, including Cologne, Regensburg, Brugge, Munich, and Stuttgart. He spent two years (1999-2001) in the Dominican Republic as an artist in residence and teacher of painting at the Altos de Chavon/The School of Design, affiliated with Parsons of NYC. In 2001, he stayed in Antwerpen, Belgium, for a year, where he was studying the techniques of the seventeenth-century Flemish painters and preparing a series of works that he exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Macedonia. Currently he lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Throughout Robert Dandarov’s paintings lingers a continuous, poetic processing of people’s darker yet delicate inner sphere by means of mythology, symbolism, playfulness, and art history. The heavy burden his paintings seem to bear is, with a sense of humour, passed on to the viewer, who needs a chair to unpack the many layers Dandarov has hidden within the rhythm of his works. Similar to an ominous movie, his paintings carry an unbearable suspense, like a chronicle of a ghastly occurrence foretold, albeit with a whimsical undertone. Image upon image, this artist’s surfaces tell us stories without a timeline, bringing history and fairytales to our present day through his sophisticated understanding of metaphors and symbols.