Kolë Idromeno (Nikollë), a painter, photographer, and architect, People’s Painter, passed away. He was born in Shkodra in 1860, into the family of the engineer Arsen Idromeno from Arta of Chameria, who had settled in Shkodra after being pursued by the Ottoman authorities. From a young age, he showed noticeable inclinations towards the arts, which he cultivated with the encouragement of the photographer Pietro Marubi. In 1876, he went to Venice, where he attended the Academy of Arts for several months and then worked with a local painter, a friend of his family. He practiced many crafts: besides painting, he also worked in sculpture, theatrical decoration, engineering, furniture making, etc. He was one of the pioneers of the first collective art exhibition in Shkodra (1923) and participated in the first national art exhibition, opened in Tirana in 1931. Kolë Idromeno had a photographic studio in Shkodra and was the first organizer of film screenings in Albania (1912). He became known abroad for his works exhibited in international exhibitions, such as in Budapest (1900) and New York (1939). Kolë Idromeno created interesting, descriptive compositions in painting, with a certain naivety about the characteristic life of the region such as “Dasma shkodrane” (“Shkodra wedding”) 1920 and with religious subjects, but meticulously and vividly portraying scenes from the everyday life of the people such as “Dy rrugë” (“Two roads”) (1886). He excelled particularly in portrait painting such as “Portret fshatari” (“Portrait of a villager”), 1924; “Mbesa” (“The niece”), 1932). His masterpiece and one of the most distinguished works of Albanian painting is “Motra Tone” (“Our Sister”) (1883), a profound and delicate portrait depicting the social drama of the Shkodra woman. Kolë Idromeno was the first in Albanian art to create landscapes, which he treated with intense colors, paving the way for secular realistic painting. Kolë Idromeno worked on the urban planning of Shkodra in the early 20th century and designed a series of public, social, and private buildings in the architectural style of that period, most of which formed the face of the city’s main street. His photographs, as documents of the time, were executed with aesthetic taste. His paintings are preserved in the Art Galleries in Tirana and Shkodra; his photographs and drawings are kept in the State Central Archive. (In the photo: Kole Idromeno, self-portrait, 1931.)
Text: Albanian encyclopedic dictionary – Vol. 2 , Academy of Sciences of Albania, “Kristalina-KH”, Tirana, 2008, page 971-972.
Photo: © https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kol%C3%AB_Idromeno
Graphic processing: AHCF
