Kolë Idromeno

Biography

The portrait of his sister Tona, painted in 1883, is now called the first psychological portrait in Albanian art. The girl is shown in the traditional costume of Shkodër, and it is the costume, according to descriptions, that emphasises her modesty. Idromeno was twenty-two.

He was born on 15 August 1860 in Shkodër, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire. The family was of Cham origin and came from Parga; later part of the clan settled on Corfu. His grandfather, Andrea Idromeno, was a priest and teacher on Corfu, compiled a history of Parga and Souli, and helped translate the Gospel into Albanian in the Greek alphabet. His father, Arsen, moved to Shkodër in 1856, worked as a carpenter and joiner and, as a self-taught designer, drew up plans for private houses. His mother was called Roza Saraçi. His first lessons came from Pietro Marubi, an Italian photographer and painter and a close friend of the family. From 1871 Kolë worked in his studio, painted in watercolour from the age of eleven and learned photography. In 1875 he won a competition for a place at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice; the sources differ slightly on the date (1875 and 1876), as they do on the length of his stay: by some accounts he studied for a few months, by others longer. Afterwards he worked in the studio of an Italian painter and travelled around Europe. In 1878 he returned to Shkodër and took part in the town’s cultural and patriotic movement, which is linked to the Albanian National Awakening.

Until 1896 he painted mostly religious subjects. After that he turned to secular, realist work: historical events, festivals and costumes, for example “Dasma Shkodrane” (“The Shkodër Wedding”). Landscapes followed, among them “Oborri i Shtëpisë Shkodrane” (“The Courtyard of a Shkodër House”), and he is considered the first landscape painter of modern Albanian art. In 1890 he painted a portrait of Skanderbeg. His works were shown at international exhibitions: in Budapest in 1900 and in New York in 1939.

He is called the founder of Albanian realist painting. I think the title “the Michelangelo of Albania”, which is applied to him, says more about the breadth of his activities than about his style.

He opened a photographic studio and corresponded with the Lumière brothers in Paris. In 1912 he was the first in the country to show motion picture screenings. In 1923 the first art exhibition in Shkodër was held on his initiative, and in 1931 his works were included in the first national art exhibition in Tirana.

As an architect Idromeno received commissions from the beginning of the twentieth century. The number of buildings is given differently, from fifty to more than a hundred designs. He is credited with the café Kafja e Madhe, the Rozafa cinema, the town’s first electric power station, the Prefecture building, industrial buildings, banks, the church in Shirokë and the mosque in Parrucë. He also designed the coffered ceiling of St Stephen’s Cathedral, one of the largest cathedrals in the Balkans, and built villas along much of the main boulevard in the northern historic district of Shkodër. Some of his drawings survive in an archive. In 2013 an exhibition showed fifty photocopies of his sketches and twenty-five of his photographs of buildings completed before 1939.

Because of his commitment to Albanian independence, he had to emigrate to Ulcinj for a time. Idromeno died in Shkodër on 12 December 1939. The town has a pedestrian street named after him, which has kept its early twentieth-century appearance.