TIRANA, Aug. 18 – One of Albania’s best artists, late Kolà« Idromeno is being commemorated on his 150th birth anniversary with a special exhibition featuring him as a pioneer of Albanian cinema, an architect and a painter.
Several books and press articles where the late modern Albanian painter was featured are being displayed in the exhibition.
“As an invitation to readers to get to know better this major figure of Albanian art, the exhibition has been conceived in three key points of Idromeno’s creativity, as a pioneer of Albanian cinematography, an architect and a painter,” organizers say.
“It features for the first time materials of special interest to readers and art lovers including albums and press coverage.”
The exhibition which is being showcased at the hall of the National Library will be open until August 30.
Kolà« Idromeno is the pioneer of the Albanian painting school of realism in the 19th and 20th centuries. His first teacher was renowned Pjeter Marubi, the founder of Marubi Photo Collection in Shkodra.
Idromeno is known for his ethnographic compositions.
In 1883, he created the first Albanian realistic picture known with the name “Motra Tone,” (Sister Tone) a masterpiece of the Albanian painting, both of Renaissance and Independence periods.
Kolà« Idromeno
Painter, photographer and architect Kolà« Idromeno (1860-1939) is perhaps the best-known of the early figures of Albanian painting. He was born in Shkodra and began drawing and doing water colours at an early age (1871-1874). With the help of Pjetà«r Marubi, from whom he also learned the art of photography, he was able to travel to Venice in 1875 to attend the Academy of Fine Arts, but he did not survive the rigors of formal training and gave up after six months. He remained in Venice, though, and worked for a couple of years as the assistant to an established Venetian painter, returning to Albania in 1878. In 1883, he opened a photo studio with cameras imported from the Pathà© company in France. In 1912, he became the first person in Albania to import moving picture equipment and to show films. In August of that year, he signed a contract with the Josef Stauber company in Austria to set up the country’s first, rudimentary public cinema. As a painter, Idromeno preferred urban subjects, such as in his Dasma shkodrane (Wedding in Shkodra), 1924, but also did portraits of intellectuals and nationalist figures. Particularly well-known is the portrait of his half-veiled Motra Tone (My Sister Tone), 1883. Landscapes and religious subjects also occur. His paintings were shown at international art exhibitions in Budapest (1898), Rome (1925), Bari (1931), Rome (1936) and New York (1939). Kolà« Idromeno is also remembered as a sculptor and as an architect of public buildings in Shkodra. (Bio by Robert Elsie, specialist in Albanian studies).
