Late realist painter featured in a retrospective exhibition

“Sadik Kaceli was a realist painter. His works in painting, drawing and graphics are permeated by a humanist spirit. They belong to lyrical creativity and their poetry is often enriched with romantic characteristics,” said Artan Shabani, the director of the National Arts Gallery.
TIRANA, Oct. 15 – Drawings, graphs and paintings by Sadik Kaceli, one of Albania’s best 20th century artists, are being displayed in a retrospective exhibition at the National Art Gallery featuring the late artist’s 70-year creativity.
“Sadik Kaceli was a realist painter. His works in painting, drawing and graphs are permeated by a humanist spirit. They belong to lyrical creativity and their poetry is often enriched with romantic characteristics,” said Artan Shabani, the director of the National Arts Gallery at the exhibition’s opening ceremony this week.
He described the late artist as a real master of paining bringing a French spirit of what is known as “La Belle ʰoque” (Beautiful Era) in France from 1895 to the onset of the World War 1 in 1914.
Buron Kaceli, the son of late painter and also the co-curator of the exhibition, said he was pleased his father’s works, among which previously unexhibited ones, were being put on display after so many years.
Gezim Q쯤ro, the other curator of the exhibition described Kaceli as “a paradigm, an alchemy between east and west with no cultural shock.”
The exhibition at the National Art Gallery will remain open until November 16.
Sadik Kaceli (1914-2000) was born in Tirana of a large family from the nearby Dajti region. From 1929, he attended the American Vocational School, where he specialized in drawing. He acquired an initial knowledge of world art from the art books and magazines that he discovered at the new Herbert Library, the first public library in Albania, founded by Lady Carnarvon. Wishing to study art in France, he wrote a letter to French painter Henri Matisse (1869-1954), who replied to him on 12 April 1936, recommending that he contact art critic Andr題hote (1885- 1962) and study at the Ecole Nationale Sup곩eure des Beaux Arts in Paris. In September 1936, assisted financially by his brothers, Kaceli thus left for Paris and continued his training there until 1941. On his return to Tirana, he taught art at a secondary school and then, from 1946 until his retirement in 1973, at the Jordan Misja Academy. Sadik Kaceli was a realist painter though he was never willing or able to adapt his style completely to the prerequisites of socialist realism and was thus marginalized for many years during the dictatorship. He is remembered for both portraits and landscape paintings.