Maks Velo

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Maks Velo (born August 31, 1935 in Paris , † May 7, 2020 in Tirana ) was an Albanian painter , architect and writer . He designed several famous buildings in Tirana. Due to his unconventional demeanor and his modern art , he was imprisoned for a long time under the communist regime . After the political change, Velo was one of the intellectuals and former political prisoners who represented the conscience of the Albanian nation.

Childhood and education

His father Sotir Velo had a medical degree in Athens and worked in France . His mother, Ani Poro, was the daughter of Albanian immigrants from the village of Dardha near Korça and was an American citizen. After his birth, the family moved back to Albania. Velo grew up in Korça, where he spent the first two years of his high school at the Raqi Qirinxhi High School. During this time he was student at the famous painter Vangjush million . Since Velo came from an academic family, he learned to play the piano and various foreign languages. In the 1950s he moved with his family to the capital Tirana, where he attended the Qemal-Stafa-Gymnasium for the remaining two years of his high school and graduated in 1952.

Velo wanted to become an architect from an early age. After graduating from high school, he therefore studied civil engineering at the Polytechnic Institute of the University of Tirana , where he graduated in 1957. After completing his studies, Velo worked as an architect for the project office of the capital's executive committee. From 1960 to 1973 he designed houses, hotels, schools, cinemas and parks in Tirana, among other things. Already during his studies and later, Velo dealt with various art eras. This passion also led him to works of art that had been created by anonymous artists for centuries, such as the figure of Skanderbeg , masks, tombstones, painted wax figures, metal door knockers, the figure of the double-headed eagle or engraved shepherd figures.

Meanwhile, his pictures and drawings were shown in exhibitions in Durrës (1958) and Tirana (1959 and 1961). From 1960 to 1972 Velo took part in Albanian art exhibitions in Moscow and Bucharest . He also took part in exhibitions with artists from the Academies of the East and the National Competition of Fine Arts. In 1969 he became a member of the Albanian Association of Writers and Artists ( Lidhja e Shkrimtarëve dhe Artistëve të Shqipërisë ) and held lectures at the University of the Arts in Tirana from 1970 to 1973 .

Arrest and imprisonment

Even if he was critically observed by many artists and academics before, it was not until 1973 that public criticism of his work was expressed by members of both the fourth general assembly of the Albanian Union of Writers and Artists and the party conference for art and literature. Velo was accused of foreign influences in his works. As a result, Velo had to move to the village of Ndroq , 15 kilometers from Tirana, in September 1973 , where he lived until his arrest in 1978. This internal exile was a frequent condemnation measure of the communist state of Enver Hoxha . In 1975 he was again publicly criticized at the National Architecture Meeting. Here, too, the strong influences and tendencies of European modernity and postmodernism in his work were condemned. He was declared as decadent and was therefore considered an enemy of the Labor Party of Albania ( Partia e Punës e Shqipërisë ) and the Albanian state.

Velo was arrested on October 14, 1978 and, after six months of pre- trial detention, sentenced to ten years' imprisonment and hard labor in the notorious Spaç camp using the rubber paragraph "Agitation and Propaganda" . During his detention, 246 of his works were burned. He later processed his experiences in his painting as well as in the prose works “The Prison Coat ” (Palltoja e Burgut) , “The Prison Sack ” (Thesi i Burgut) or “The Story of a Piece of Stone” (Historia e Një Copë Guri) . Velo was granted amnesty in 1986, so that he was released two years before the end of his prison term. From 1966 to 1986 he was asked six times to become a member of the State Security Service . He always refused to do so and was therefore forced to do lower labor after being detained.

Life after discharge

After his imprisonment he moved back to Tirana, where he was a simple worker in a grindstone plant from 1986 to 1991. In 1991 he was found innocent by the Albanian High Court. Velo was granted political prisoner status and US citizenship in 1992. In 1992, Velo was invited to the Efemere Art Center in Paris by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Culture . From 1992 to 1996 he participated in several conferences on human rights in Poland, Slovenia, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia and France.

In 2018, Velo published the names of his friends and fellow artists responsible for his detention in the 1970s, using documents from the former state security as evidence. Although Velo spoke of several artists and writers, including Dritëro Agolli and Kujtim Buza , Llambi Blido was the main culprit for Velo's arrest. Velo testified that Blido spied on him and probably several other people as well, as he was explicitly forbidden from mentioning his name during the trial. In an interview Velo noted that in no other country in the world would artists behave so towards their own kind. The communism , said Velo, is like a steam locomotive that will not fired by coal, but by enemies. As soon as the enemies ran out, communism would no longer work, just as the locomotive would stand still without coal.

Maks Velo died on May 7, 2020 in Tirana at the age of 84.

plant

Skyscraper on Dibra Street in Tirana, building planned by Maks Velo

Velo's works of art can be divided into two creative periods: The first period began during his youth and lasted until 1978, when 468 of his works of art were confiscated by a court decision by the police. The second period began in the 1990s. Due to the destruction of his works, little is known about his first creative period, which at the time was considered decadent and too strongly influenced by the West. It was also these works that were used as the main indictment of Velo's ten-year prison sentence.

From this collection only 35 works were secretly sent to Paris and only returned to Velo after the political change. More information about this period can be obtained from Velo's drawings, which were published in the periodical “Shqipëria e Re” (The New Albania). These drawings are valued because of the versatile arrangement and stylization of the figures, the unusual composition and their departure from socialist realism . They were the most modern drawings published in Albania at that time.

During his second creative period Velo had several painting cycles such as "Die Holzfäller" (Druvarët) , "Die Leprakranken" (Lebërit) , "Folk-Instrumentalisten" (Instrumentistë Popullorë) , "Der Mensch" (Njeriu) and "Der Träger" (Trau) which were realized over a period of 17 years and exhibited in more than 40 solo exhibitions at home and abroad. From 1994 to 2008 Velo gave lectures at several institutions, such as the Katherine of Nash Gallery in Minneapolis , the Galeria Kombëtare e Arteve in Tirana, SMILE in Paris, the Enzo Pulli Gallery in Drôme (France), Poznan , Zielona Góra and Toruń (Poland), in Ithaca in New York, in Saint Petersburg and at La Sapienza University in Rome . Velo's art consists primarily of artfully stylizing his figures and transforming them into magical, decorative elements.

His architectural legacy includes several buildings in Tirana such as the former Pallati i Pionierve (Palace of Pioneers) cinema , the former Agjencia Telegrafike Shqiptare on today's Zogu Boulevard , the Hotel Arbana (today the General Police Directorate), the Lapraka cinema, the foreign language school " Asim Vokshi ”, the Emin Duraku School and the skyscraper on Dibra Street where the writer Ismail Kadare lived until 1990. The public buildings also include some industrial facilities such as the match factory in Tirana, the mechanical facilities in Peshkopia and Kukës, and the Institute of Geography at the University of Tirana. From 1992 to 2005 Velo published eleven scientific articles in the magazine "Monumentet" (monuments) on folk art (for example on the engravings on Albanian houses, the figure of Skanderbeg, the bird and the snake, masks and tombstones).

From 1991 to 2004 Velo had 38 exhibitions in Albania, France, Poland and the USA and took part in a few group shows in Greece, Italy, France, Tunisia and the USA. As an artist and writer, Velo published around 20 albums and books with drawings, stories, novellas, poems and essays between 1973 and 2018. The National Gallery of Arts in Tirana owns eleven works by Velo from 1958 to 1971. In 2015 Velo was invited to the gallery to open the exhibition of his retrospective. Velo donated 54 works from 1960 to 2015 to the museum.

Publications

  • Vizatime mbi arkitekturën shqiptare (“Drawings on Albanian Architecture”), Tirana, 1995.
  • Kokëqethja ("Shearing the Head"), Tirana, 1995.
  • Palltoja e burgut ("The Prison Coat "), Tirana, 1995.
  • Thesi i burgut (“The Prison Sack ”), Tirana, 1996.
  • Jeta ime në figura ("My life in pictures"), Tirana, 1996.
  • Kohë Antishenjë ("The time of the anti-symbol "), Tirana, 2000.
  • Nënë Tereza ("Mother Teresa"), Tirana, 2004.
  • Spaçi , Tirana, 2010.
  • Hetimi ("The Investigation"), Tirana, 2010.
  • Grafika e realizmit socialist në Shqipëri (“The graphics of socialist realism in Albania”), Tirana, 2014.
  • Klubi Karavasta (“The Karavasta Bar”), Tirana, 2016.
  • Përkthyesi ("The Translator"), Tirana, 2018.

in German:

  • Anti-communist loneliness . In: Florian Kienzle: Taking and giving. The genders in Albanian literature. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2020. ISBN 9783447114349
  • The last sheet . In: At the bay window . No. 79, Münster 2020.

literature

  • Ylli Drishti: Maks Velo. Galeria Kombëtare e Arteve, Tirana 2015.
  • Robert Elsie : Maks Velo. Historical Dictionary of Albania. Jon Woronoff. Scarecrow Press, Lanham 2010. pp. 468 f.

Web links

Commons : Maks Velo  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Blog • Maks Velo: disparition d'un artiste albanais d'envergure internationale ( French ) In: Le Courrier des Balkans . May 9, 2020.
personal data
SURNAME Velo, Maks
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Albanian painter, architect and writer
DATE OF BIRTH August 31, 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH May 7, 2020
Place of death Tirana