TIRANA, Dec. 17 – More than 100 works of socialist realism part of the collection of the national art gallery in Tirana will travel to neighboring Kosovo for a one-month display. The selected 122 works have already received the approval of the Albanian government for their display at the National Kosovo Gallery in Prishtina for January 2016.
Socialist realism artworks have attracted huge attention recently after some of them were selected to showcase in the premises of the government residences.
“The major part of the National Gallery’s collection belongs to socialist realism. I have noticed that all collectors and curators show special interest in this period, because not everybody has had the luxury to experiment or touch it,” says Artan Shabani, the director of the National Gallery of Arts in Tirana.
The art of this period is entirely propaganda, serving the interest of the political regime in power. “Based on clichà©s imported from its originating place, the former Soviet Union, this art focused on the workers and their actions, transforming them into ‘myths’ of the period. In fact, socialist realism does not try to show openly and truthfully the daily aspects of the reality of the working class, but strives to erect and establish the socialist working activity as some sort of a cult while placing the common worker as the main character of a ‘new epoch’,” says the National Gallery about the permanent socialist realism pavilion.
Noted artists who have developed significant works in this genre included Kristaq Rama, Muntaz Dhrami, Zef Shoshi, Pandi Mele, Myrteza Fushekati, Petro Kokushta, à‡lirim Ceka and many others.
