Lin Delija’s paintings on display at National Museum

TIRANA, June 3 – Lin Delija, the late Albania painter who spent his adult life in Italy escaping the country’s communist regime since its beginning, will have his works displayed at the National Museum of History in Tirana starting from June 4.
The contemporary art exhibition, organized by the Lin Delija Cultural Association in Italy, will for the first time bring Delija’s contemporary artworks.
“The exhibition tries to chronologically rebuild the artistic road of Lin Delija,” said Antonella Muzi, the director of Lin Delija museum in Italy’s Antrodoco.
The exhibition features works from private and public collections bringing paintings of religious, political and social themes created during his stay in Italy until 1994 when he passed away.
Last month, Lin Delija was posthumously decorated with the “Nation’s honour” order.
In 1945, soon after the communist regime had taken over, 19-year-old Delija was faced with the choice of serving in the army or deserting, which entailed the risk of being sentenced to death by hanging. After a series of mishaps that crossed his path as he fled, he was finally able to refine his artistic talents while studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, Croatia.
Following a community of Albanian refugees, he ended up in Rome, where he frequented the Academy of Fine Arts. At the age of thirty-four he moved to Antrodoco, where he carried on his work, painting canvases with both sacred and profane subjects, with a realistic, even crude style at times, constantly emphasizing the spirit’s incorruptible superiority over the fragility of the flesh.
Delija died of a stroke in Rome on 9 April 1994.