The figure of the Albanian artist Maks Velo is multifaceted and quite special. He completed his higher studies at the University of Tirana (construction engineering/architecture). Velo was an architect of many public, social, cultural, and industrial buildings in Albania, but at the same time, he was also involved in painting. In 1978, he was arrested and sentenced to 10 years in political prison for his modern art outside the norms of the socialist realism method. The creativity of the painter Velo is divided into two periods: from the beginning until 1978, when 468 of his works were seized and burned by the Albanian police (by court decision), as well as the period after 1990, when he held over 40 personal exhibitions in Albania, France etc. Velo’s pictorial style was influenced by modern European painting, where the abstraction of form and individual style is felt. (In the photo: Velo’s work “New Buildings in Tirana”, 1969, pen drawing.)
Text: Ylli Drishti, 100 years of Tirana in painting; 1920–2020 , “Mediaprint”, Tirana, 2020, page 37
Photo: © Drishti Y., personal archive
Graphic processing: AHCF
