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Olsi, just like Edi, is a man...
by Naum Mara
I did not expect to discover a beautiful part of Albania, exactly where the shadow of the famous Dome of the Duomo of Florence stays longer. In the northern part of the Cathedral.
I generally stop at places where painters wait for tourists. The sparks of brilliant painters or of quite good colorists, who have passed on to the good art schools of Eastern Europe, are often discernible. It is not easy to live alone with art in the West and it is especially difficult in North America. Selling watercolors, graphics, cartoons, and quick pencil portraits is one of the ways painters have chosen to do in places where many tourists pass during the year. It is not a simple job, but it is closer to their profession even though everyone would prefer to paint quietly, in their studio, undisturbed by the noises and movements of people.
He was an Iranian painter, who after learning that I was Albanian told me that more than half of the painters near the Duomo were Albanian. I felt very good even though I could not distinguish the adjectives in their works to make you familiar. He introduced me the next day to some of them, Mark Kokaj, an intelligent veterinarian from Lezha, who had been in Florence for years and knew our community well.
Alfred Miloti was one of our artists in Florence, who studied sculpture in Milan but had previously graduated from the art school "Jan Kukuzeli" in Durrës where well-known Durrës painters such as Gavril Priftuli taught. Fred is very lively, with a smile that does not leave his face, but quite serious towards art and demands on him. As Mark mentioned a giant key to him teasing him, it occurred to me that I had seen a television show about one of his sculptural works set at the entrance to Cernovara, Avelino in Italy. It is truly a wise sculptural work, with a sleek three-dimensional treatment that makes you think. With simplicity and a smile, Fredi talked about other similar projects, in other parts of Italy.
The first in the line of artists was Armand Xhomo, whose name I had heard before the fall of the Dictatorship. Xhomo has finished scenography and has worked for several films of the film studio "Shqipëria e Re", but in the exhibited works I see little influence from the scenography. Contrasting color in oil paintings and elegance in watercolors. He invites us to see his studio exhibition by not paying attention to the works put up for sale in the square. I am held hostage that time does not promise me to see the things that make me feel proud. Armandi is a very good painter and is known in Northern Italy, but also in America.
My friend Mark Kokaj takes me to the studio of the painter Frederik Ivanaj, whom he calls the "dean" of the Albanian painters of the Duomo because he was the first of them. Ivanaj has not worked in the square for some time, but his studio is in a place very much beaten by tourists and he continues to paint for them, as well as to receive orders from Italian art lovers looking for large oil paintings. The conversation with him revolves around the Scenography Branch at the Institute of Arts in the '80s, about the well-known Agim Zajmi and Ali Oseku, as well as the major restrictions on the painting exhibitions of the Dictatorship years. Surprisingly in his studio, I find works by an excellent Albanian painter, Artur Muharremi, with whom Ivanaj was friends in Lice. Muharrem is undoubtedly one of the best Albanian painters in the European elite. Frederick with his outspoken speech speaks with as much love for his friend's paintings as for his works. Love and respect for the work of a colleague is not a common occurrence, but I find it present in our painters in Florence.
I had gone to Florence mainly for Brunaleski although I knew there were also many from Giotto, Michelangelo, Donatello and Dante there. But what excited me the most were our painters, who were not discouraged by emigration, but had continued to do with passion and desire what they had dreamed of all their lives. To paint!
So where? Exactly under the "shadow" of Brunaleski and other giants of the European Renaissance.