Ibrahim Kodra’s first museum ready to open in Durres

TIRANA, Oct. 26 – A private museum featuring paintings and memorabilia of Ibrahim Kodra, the internationally renowned late Albanian post-cubist painter, will soon open in his hometown of Durres, members of the Ibrahim Kodra Foundation told reporters this week.
The museum, located in the second floor of a building in the Durres industrial market will have on display, more than 40 artworks by Kodra including paintings, drawings, ceramics but also original documents, photos of his private life, personal objects and the press coverage he received.
According to Fatos Faslliu, the executor of Kodra’s will, the project satisfied the painter’s desire to have a museum in Albania, which will be the third displaying his creativity after the previously established museum in Italy’s Milan and Switzerland’s Lugano.
Albanian post-cubist painter Ibrahim Kodra spent his adult life in Italy’s Milan. His collection includes some 6,000 pieces of art. He was widely admired not only among Albanians and Italians for his modern abstractionist art, but throughout Europe and worldwide.
Born in Ishem village outside Durres in 1918, at the age of 20 Ibrahim Kodra went to Italy to study at the Fine Arts University, where he won a scholarship from the Italian government as an emerging talent.
In 1944 he opened his first studio in Milan. Six years later he performed frescoes in public and private buildings in Milan.
One of his most successful exhibitions was held in 1954, when he exhibited along with Picasso, Rouault, Dufy, Matisse, Modigliani and other artists to the exhibition of design and ‘contemporary engraving of Chiavari (Genoa).
In 1996 he was granted the “Honour of the nation” award from Albania.
Ibrahim Kodra died in his apartment in Milan in February 2007 at the age of 88 but was buried in his birthplace of Ishem, outside Durres, under his will.
His works are currently on display in the Museum of Vatican, in the Chamber of Deputies (House of Representatives) of the Italian Parliament in Rome, and in private collections all around the world.