TIRANA, June 18 – One of Albania’s best artists, veteran painter Leke Tasi who was persecuted during the country’s communist regime, has opened a solo exhibition called “Satire in the Skanderbeg Square” featuring 45 paintings of different techniques created in the past 14 years.
Curators describe the 86-year old painter as a traditional painter with an inclination toward modern art who has also cultivated surrealist and naive art.
“His simple realization of his 1950s watercolor paintings was fed by his eternal love for Tirana where he grew up. In every paining by this author, who in his full maturity as his comes in this 2015 exhibition at the National Art Gallery, every surprise is a surprise of the plot. The painter achieves this with his own imagination and completes it thanks to his admirable creative and improvising skills,” says curator Suzana Varvarica Kuka.
Tasi worked as cellist at Tirana Opera house for 20 years under the communist regime before he interned to a village with his family from 1974 – 1990. From 1991 until 1998 he worked for the state secretariat of religions.
“The artist, persecuted by the communist regime, worked in seclusion, resulting in delayed opportunities to exhibit his works, first in 1992 and then in 2003. His rejection of socialist realism assured him the freedom, always carefully guarded, to keep open his personal window on the world,” critics say.
“He is sometimes lyrical, sometimes ironical, and even grotesque. His inclination to deform, to disregard proportions, to surprise the viewer by means of the absurd, gives him the unique pleasure of a creator. While the traditional rule of perspective – depicting large what is near and small what is distant – is a vital part of his nature, he partially violates this rule. This deviance is born in his inner tendency to want to overcome all kinds of limitations, among them, gravity. Thus, we see in several of his paintings flying figures and those suspended in the air, which, by serving compositional considerations, allows him to give expression to his more fantastic visions,” add critics..
His exhibition at the National Art Gallery will be open from June 18 to July 8.
