With a collection of 58 works in different techniques and sizes shown in the Mezuraj Museum, Helidon Haliti appears as one of the pairs of the actual Albanian figurative art. He was born in Lushnj련4.05.1968) and completed the Arts Lyceum in Berat in 1986. He graduated at the Fine Arts Academy in Tirana in 1993. Helidon Haliti started participating in exhibitions as early as 1984. Through the years 1996 – 2001 he participated in a number of exhibitions in Greece. “In 2000 we had an exhibition of 10 Albanian painters in the heart of Athens in Greece. The exhibitions I participated in Greece are very important. It is a very problematic country. Globalization seems not to have penetrated. You cannot hear Albanian music as freely as we hear our neighbors’ music as well as music from foreign cultures and styles. The exhibition of the 10 Albanian painters in Athens was heavily attended by Greeks and Albanians. It was impregnated with a touching feeling of dignity.” – recalls Helidon Haliti. In 2003 he was at work again in Tirana, and in 2007 participated in an exhibition of Albanian painters at the Mezuraj Museum. This time in 2009 he comes with a complete personal exhibition of the Museum’s collection of his artworks. On the catalogue issued by the Mezuraj Museum we halt before the free drawing of an owl. “The owl is the angel of light. Through darkness, I see the light. He is my symbol. The owl is present in many of my works, as well as the cock who seems to me to be the horse of the birds.” – says the painter.
Early Works
The exhibition includes some of the early works of the artist. One of them is an aquarelle of a house in Pogradec. The image appears to the viewer in pure lines. This is one of the items of a 20 aquarelles set that he completed in his academic studies. “The stylization is almost at the maximum possible yield and from this point of view, this is perhaps one of the best of this set. Usually the students had to work on a painting for the whole year and I decided to propose a set of aquarelles.” – recalls Helidon Haliti. This old set of aquarelles contains views from Lushnja, Tirana and Pogradec, as well as some compositions. Today part of the set resides with the Fine Arts Academy, some have been sold in Greece, others are in the collections of the Mezuraj Museum and the remainder are in the author’s possession. “I project to revisit the most known landscapes, be they mine or other artist’s with the idea that time works and forcibly brings changes.” – says Helidon Haliti.
The cycles
“The way I treat a subject, a group of forms or an idea, is by cycles and I usually have nearly 10 works per cycle. Some of the cycles are not yet complete and some others are complete but scattered in different collections.” – says Helidon Haliti, as he shows works from the Portraits, Dialogue, Isolation, and Luna Park cycles, – “I was in the Luna Park attractions with my son and people were taking photos of their children. The camera has become e member of our body. I decided to make some paintings and form a cycle on this subject. The important thing to me appeared that each child seizes his own dream.” Helidon Haliti has received a warm welcome from many eminent artists. The renowned Albanian writer Ismail Kadare writes: “The paintings of Helidon Haliti have the faculty of making a passer-by halt before them, perhaps without knowing his name, his age and the country where he was born. This is the first non-iterant act of art. ŠThese paintings, like all the arts, are and are not related to life. More precisely, they are connected to life but not through a chain (or shackles), but through freedom, which is a supreme relation, the only one that art accepts”.
The Mezuraj Museum
Established in 2005 in the heart of Tirana, only a close distance from the National Museum and adjacent to the Ministry of Culture, the Mezuraj Museum is a private museum. Today Albania offers a network of museums, the majority of which are public and state-owned. Few private museums and many private galleries complete this network, the Mezuraj Museum in Tirana and the Bratko Museum of Oriental Art in Kor諠being the eminent private institutions in this field. The Mezuraj Museum was officially licensed in March 2006. Its collections offer a general picture of the history, art and culture about the Albanian territory. The collections of the museum include prehistoric, classical and early middle ages archeological findings as well as figurative art works from the early Albanian figurative tradition to the new and eminent painters of our time. During the second part of March and extending through April, the Mezuraj Museum will exhibit 58 artworks from the Museum’s collection of paintings by Helidon Haliti, offering thus a very indicative view of the evolution of pictorial and thematic research of the painter. During this exhibition, only a small part of the museum’s archeological collections will be on display.
