TIRANA, April 13 – New York-based Albanian contemporary artist Zinni Veshi and Zef Shoshi, one of Albania’s most representative Socialist realism artists, are being showcased in two separate exhibitions at the National Art Gallery in Tirana.
Albania-born and educated Zinni Veshi, who has been living and working in the U.S. for the past two decades, is back home with a solo “Beyond the figurative” show .
Curator Krenar Zejno says Veshi’s exhibition brings back contemporary oil on canvas paintings to Albania.
“Zinni Veshi is a human figure painter. Every painting of his is an exposà© of a portrait in group as well as an exhibition of portraits. It’s like an aggregate of an underground train with everywhere profiles at unknown stations. New York, the city where the author lives and creates his colors, is like a coincidence station, typical to give the urban coloring,” says the curator.
Zinni Veshi, who since 1998 has been living in New York where he also runs his own studio, says his paintings “express, articulate, and bring to life deep feelings, ideas or impulses that are fundamental to my existence.”
“There are three factors that comprise the essence of my works: oil paint as a material; non-descriptive means of expression; and the non-representational use of the human figure,” he has earlier said.
Veshi’s exhibition at the National Art Gallery will be open from April 14 to May 10.
Meanwhile, veteran painter Zef Shoshi, brings a retrospective exhibition of more than five decades of experience as an artist.
This exhibition brings a collection of 38 works in genres like composition, portrait, landscape and pastel drawing, dating from 1956 to 2014.
Having graduated from the St. Petersburg Academy in the 1950s, Shoshi is also known as the painter of the portraits of late communist dictator Enver Hoxha and important political events during the communist period.
Artan Shabani, the director of the National Arts Gallery, says Shoshi is one of the most realistic Albanian artists known for his paintings and compositions dedicated to work in the agriculture sector and the National Liberation war at the end of World War II.
Shoshi’s exhibition at the National Art Gallery will be open until April 30.
The two exhibition come after masterpieces of Italy’s 20th century art were displayed in Tirana in one of the most special exhibitions Tirana’s National Art Gallery has hosted along with the 2010 showcase of some of greatest global masters such as Picasso, Warhol, Clemente and Chagall.
The exhibition featuring wonderful women portraits, famous people, still life, landscapes, views from the Eternal City and Roman lowlands that inspired great 20th century Italian artists such as Balla, Carrà , De Chirico, De Pisis, Capogrossi remained on display for three months until early April.
