Part One
Memorie.al / Since I first saw the monumental sculpture of Aqif Pasha Elbasani, I have been fascinated by that brilliant classical realization, where every detail of it is expressed with a pure realism and warm feelings, as all the virtues of this great thinker and humanist emerge: his simplicity, spiritual intimacy, and the delicacy of the intellectual humanist, his love for the common people, the desire to sacrifice and give everything for the good of the nation (his left hand on his heart and his index finger pointed towards the flag on his right side) and his great dream, that Albania would become a free, independent, and advanced country like all those modern states of civilized Europe. At the time this monument was erected, on November 25, 1995, its author, quite young, probably did not realize that this work of his would remain the emblem of the city of Elbasan. Almost twenty years have passed since that day, while the artist Bujar Kapllani has also created other works, but at the same time, he has also worked as a professor of Visual Arts at “Aleksandër Xhuvani” University.
Bujar Kapllani, with family origins from Përmet, has moved to different places in the homeland, because his father was an army officer and cadre. It is enough to mention that he spent his childhood years in the small city of Gramsh, and then he completed his high school and higher artistic education in Tirana. In 1987, he graduated from the Academy of Arts with the title “Monumental Sculptor” and since that year, Bujar Kapllani has lived in the city of Elbasan, where he is currently a lecturer of visual arts, at the Faculty of Teacher Education, of the University of Elbasan.
Based on his artistic values, his dynamic life, his sensitivity and concerns about injustices, and his critical attitudes and that long experience of creation and work, which I think and believe would be valuable for young artists, I decided to take this interview, to publish it and make it public.
Bujar, what were your first contacts with art and your first teachers who impressed you?
Nature has always attracted me. The appearance of the city and its people have always been important, to get in touch with the environment in that small town, in Gramsh, where I spent my childhood years. The only painter of Gramsh in the late sixties and early seventies of the last century was Adem Hoxha, and I felt that he was a person who possessed special gifts, in comparison with other people, perhaps because we, as children, were fulfilled by him, with some request such as; to write something on our usual blouses, to get a paintbrush, a squeeze of color with which we tried to create, some figurative symbol, within the childlike nature.
These are the first contacts with painting. And if the first contacts are equal for all children, the desires are born inwardly there at the age of twelve or even when you pass them and come into contact with talented teachers, who stimulate your talent. Such was my drawing teacher V. Shyqyriu, who was dedicated to the development of this subject in the eight-year school of Gramsh. This teacher gave me the pleasure of participating in the drawing class, as she tested our ability to draw and not everyone passed this test. I had to work hard, not only from the trust of the teacher, but also from the pleasure I felt, in those hours of effort, to manage to draw the tasks she asked me for.
As a great and always open door to reach the dream of painting, the House of the Pioneer has remained for me, which at that time experienced a growth of cultural activities in all its professional-artistic circles, with the children of Gramsh. In the seventies, the whole city reflected a natural cultural growth, because new cadres came there, where there were also artists from well-known districts of the country, especially from Tirana and Korça. The first painter from whom I got my first lessons was Napolon Sava, while we took the courses with Professor Leon Çika, who, as soon as he finished the Academy of Arts in Tirana, came to Gramsh, where he also offered an extraordinary contribution to the Figurative Arts of the city.
The courses for the talented led by Leon Çika have been an unforgettable model for the children of that time. I remember that at that time we created very beautiful drawings and paintings, and at this time the first visions were born in me, to continue my studies in visual arts. With these experiences for visual arts, there were also my passionate peers such as A. Qose, B. Ajazi, V. Përfundi, D. Hasa, etc.
What were your first works?
I cannot make a closed cut, as perhaps the first works can also be the thinking within childhood curiosity, during the time we looked at and read books with illustrations, which have the power of imagination more of figures than of words. I think this is the magic of visual art, which penetrates, without being understood, the perceptive vision of a child. They can be not only in nature but also in books, which encourage the tendency to know, understand, and practice visual communication. I think the first practice was the selection by teacher Sh. Ballaci, when I was in the fourth grade, to prepare a drawing for the school stands.
I remember it was the drawing of an alley that led to the Kruja Castle. Although it was a drawing that I was copying from a photo and even though I stayed until the late hours to work on it, I was not convinced that I had done it beautifully, but the next day the teacher was satisfied, and I gained a lot of self-confidence. I think this was my first effort in the beautiful visual arts. The first work cannot be the privilege of a single case. More than a work, it is the phenomenon in the first steps, so I think about the past and experience some different moments of engagement in visual arts, in some different cases, which have left a mark on my consciousness.
The first case can also be mentioned in the fifth grade, where the drawing teacher in the eight-year school, gathered the most talented children in the afternoon to take advanced drawing courses. Perhaps with a sense of humor, the concerns of that time come to my mind, which I experienced while drawing a glass jar, where I remember that I could not draw the transparency in the light and shadow of the glass and I asked for the help of the teacher, but everything remained where it started in the dark shadows, perhaps not only for the fact that I was not understanding the explanations she offered me, but today that I am an artist, I think that for the teacher it must have been very difficult to model in light and shadow a glass object, which is a difficult test for a professional, even today.
Another first case remains evident when the city painter Adem Hoxha, together with two other painters, Napolon Sava and Leon Çika, who came to work in the city of Gramsh, took us, the children of the painting circle of the House of the Pioneer, and took us up to the hills of the city, to paint a landscape from the surrounding nature together. The idea was that we talented children would see how a landscape was made by the city’s painters and at the same time show our abilities by painting nature. They guided us on how to mix the colors of the water and how to place them next to each other in the painting.
What remains as a human message of this relationship between generations is the love and respect of these masters, who in a humorous way expressed that our works were “modern” and “more beautiful” than their works. Perhaps professionally they meant something unknown for that time, which was declaimed as Socialist Realism, because children’s works approach the creations of modern currents of the early twentieth century in feeling, on a naive and primitive level. This joke makes me laugh with joy, for their personality, whenever I remember it today. So art in the first steps can create beautiful human relationships even more than the works. Perhaps this can be more important, as everything is transmitted in the spiritual genes of man, in the value of the absolute for human good.
One of the beautiful memories in my beginnings is going out into nature to paint with the painter Leon Çika, who was a rare professor not only for the children, but also for his own colleagues. I remember that all the children were headed towards the Tomorr Mountain and were painting its view. The first paper I threw the colors of the Tomorr mountain, I put it on the ground and moved away to see it from a distance; then I saw that my painting did not resemble that mountain with a fascinating view, so I tore it up in a hurry, as I remained dissatisfied. Professor Leoni told me: “Don’t be upset, you will do it better next time.”
I sat down and started it a second time and the work was going better in form, size and color ratio. It was spring and I made a tree crown with flowers in the foreground and Professor Leoni liked it, with some remarks about the composition of the tree crown without its trunk. I got up and walked away, I compared it again with Tomorr in the distance, but I realized again that Tomorr was more beautiful than my painting, so I tore it up again. Here comes the most beautiful moment, which throws me into my memories with Professor Leoni, as a painter and as a person. He turns to me, opens his arms with enthusiasm and tells me: “Bravo, you will become an artist, as long as you are not satisfied with your work.”
Here came naturally the moment for you to tell us the continuation of your art path from the city of Gramsh, where the first steps in painting were, to continue sculpture in Tirana, as a student in the Artistic Lyceum. How did this happen, and how did you experience this moment?
It was purely accidental in appearance and almost like a reference of the decision-making commission for admission to the artistic high school in Tirana, but for my judgment, it was also the influence of the claim of the cadres of the education section in the city of my childhood, in Gramsh, who had no clear cultural concepts in the field of figurative art. They converted my request to continue artistic school for painting and the competition in that school, where I went, into an objective of realizing their industrial plan, in the workshops for twigs and pipes, and therefore they conditioned my right to study at the Artistic Lyceum of Tirana with the named request for “master of woodworking,” sent to the Ministry of Education and Culture.
Today I think this is the reason why the commission of that school transferred me to sculpture, as I was really prepared in painting. I wanted to intervene in the school’s directorate, to reconsider this naming, but they told me that this is the request of the city you came from, and I think this deprived me of a right that belonged to me, but not everything that starts not for good, can be like that until the end. Today I am a sculptor, as I could have been a painter, and the passion for art cannot have limits, in any kind of moral or professional dimension. One fact impresses me, that the same attitudes were reflected in that city even when I won the higher education, because this time they created some penalty boxes for me, where they tried to immediately put me in the first two or three days, when I received the news of winning the competition for the Academy of Arts, but they did not have the right tag and high morale to achieve that ominous goal.
But this time we were not talking about a coincidence in the direction of sculpture, now it was my persistent passion, which determined the fate in the competition to study monumental sculpture. The passion and perseverance in all my peers who were involved in art, was fed with fanaticism to be safe in the path of art. As stable as the qualities of the artist are, so are the inexhaustible efforts of the incompetent and the ill-wishers, to be factors in the work and efforts of the artist. So in life you cannot do both, you will either do art or, on the contrary, be a servile to the incompetent, raised on small human powers.
Your first sculpture?
My first sculpture, without mentioning school works, but, as a creation-coming from within, from my desire to be a creative sculptor, is the figure of Skanderbeg standing, realized in the fourth year of high school, when I was 18 years old, which I donated in 2006, to a former UÇK fighter in Macedonia, whom I met during the competition for the monument of Skanderbeg in Skopje, as a symbolism, as a sign of respect for the hospitality. This sculpture, which I had worked on 25 years ago, was also my first patriotic creation.
What was the outcome of your higher studies at the Academy of Arts?
The period I defended my studies, always remains in my mind with complex loads, between what I should be as an artist and what I should not do as an artist, for the mediocre taste of a majority or minority of people (I never found out), who called themselves art lovers, but who in fact with their attitudes, expressed ingratitude towards those artists, who sought to be independent in the path of art. This was a big problem, as you had to be on your own path, but also make the defensive critique in front of the “competents,” when with a stroke of a pencil, they would raise you up or lower you down. Imagine today where a galaxy of journalists of democracy, have taken this pencil in their hands, meanwhile besides the pencil, they have also taken the erasing eraser, to mark what they want and to erase what the “politicians” do not want.
So it has taken a lot of work, not only for me and other artist colleagues, to create works of art, but also on the other hand, the “competents” have moved quite forward, as they have added newspapers and media not to appreciate the artists, but to monopolize art in the focus of their “political” competence. I express these thoughts, as I have understood all these years, that art has developed continuously in this bed of popular-media competence, and, if today after 20 years, they tell me that I have made a beautiful monument for Aqif Pasha, this is also to the credit of that healthy popular opinion about the work of the artist, while the media “are silent,” as if in front of them you have created nothing, while you have actually created a monument in contemporaneity with them. We are not talking about any interview, to understand how this work was erected, but not even the name is mentioned in their “competent” media.
We have both walked, we artists and these “competents” all these years, but only one thing is clear, that true art has always tried to perfect itself towards popular culture and modern urban taste, while the “competents” in the name of the latter, continue to move in the opposite direction in the abstract world of political dependence, towards false idols with the sole purpose, of occupying at least some place in the empire of politics, in the so-called fourth power. In this background, which is democratic in form, but not functional in content, the monuments of sculpture have been erected in these two decades, which has been quite difficult, to build a system of values. I say this because I have erected the monument of Aqif Pasha, of Aleksandër Xhuvani and, of Edmond Hoxha in Kosovo, but I can only say this much, while I cannot talk about their values.
For this, the “competents” can talk, who have moved very far away from us with electoral abstractions, where art seems to them as nothing and naught, while our work, even though we cannot express what values it carries, has been created for the concrete sensations of human politics, where people live and nurture patriotism and urban aspirations, towards a modern society. Perhaps this panorama is more evident in monumental arts, as as great as the sacrifices of the dedicated artist are, so are the chances of the abusive benefit of financial morsels, which politics gives to their darlings, also for the fact that monumental sculpture, leaves room to experiment, while the traces of these experiments, leave consequences in the concrete politics of citizenship and the democratization of the functional relations of the life of the country.
In these semi-experimental relations of art with politicians, there is one good thing that is worth mentioning, the creative independence that stems from the artist’s own inner perception.
A possibility of inner illumination has a chance to happen only in the face of the difficulties that accompany the realism of a work of art. An inner human perception states that the artist can maintain a creative balance, outside the standard boundaries perceived from the outside by politics, moreover, when the evaluations are also stiffened under the effect of the external perceptions of the clannish opinions of art. Before I created these monuments we are talking about, in their external perception, the opinion-makers called me a talented creator with lyrical notes and an erotic spirit, while I, from within, felt that all these features stemmed as humanism and human love, under the effect of a powerful impulse of the professional ego, always trying to perfectly draw and model my sculptures, in such a way that in front of the citizens’ eyes they would receive the note “beautiful work,” but which would also lead with pleasure and wandering into the content of their human values.
The force of this inner perception could not fail to give results in the creation of the historical monuments, realized by me, which could not be called by the external perception of the “competents” as erotic or lyrical, but under the force of my professional work, I have made them silent with a pencil and an eraser in hand in front of the humanism, respect, and human love, that these works convey to the people and citizens of my republic, while for the “politicians” they remain a golden shield in their electoral campaigns, so much so that it seems as if they made the monuments, and not me (!!!).
What were some of the evaluations you received for your art?
I think that evaluations, sometimes, have an institutional impulse, so we are witnesses and experiencers of a time not favorable for individual artistic creation, such as monumental sculpture, but also for the arts in general. This is not because at its core urban culture is lacking, otherwise we would be wrong, because in the history of Albanian art there are many examples of success and elevation of the arts in different time periods, where Albanian society has found its missionaries for national revival, which they have expressed in the quality of their artistic works. We actually lived in a time when this culture, under the pressure of a social group hungry for power and wealth, was suppressed, shaken, despised, lost the belief that the future belonged to culture, citizenship, and art.
This time was measured only by one measure: the profit of money, this kind of profit managed to kill the morale of work, which is the main mechanism for creating value. This period, without dwelling on what I said above, is called chaos, but unfortunately not a chaos of thoughts, concepts, creations, from which art could rise again with a new spirit. This chaos had only one element: the insatiable interests of people without a craft and profession, but, who take the reins of art tenders. The tendering of art also led to the extinction of the voice of artistic criticism, as this was called promotion and advertising (!?). No individual could be an altruist to evaluate the successes of another artist; everything was personalized as a profitable success in tendering. This kind of chaos in the conception of artistic values is the cause of the lack of written opinions and critical thought in art.
The institutions, which should cover the analysis of values, were initially formal and then they lost their existence. In this chaos, even when the artist makes a very good, good, bad, or very bad work, this did not matter to the institution. The artist feels lonely in search of the oral opinions of the public, which do not constitute a guarantee for future creativity organized with the tenders of the government, while their real values took on weight in the natural words of people who honor art. The oral opinions of the public are without a name, without a number, and indelible from the consciousness of people. I feel valued that the citizens of Elbasan are proud of the monument of Aqif Pasha Elbasani and I do not feel at all a loser (this is what the municipal exponents call me) in the face of the government’s tenders for the art of their friends, to whom the opinion of ordinary citizens has given the evaluation they deserve.
Moreover, many honorable people, such as artists and personalities of the Albanian nation, have valued me for my creativity, but this remains only personal, so it is not for me to speculate with their citation, for me the respect that the citizens of Elbasan have and the congratulations of Dhimitër Shuteriqi, who valued the monument in the final approval commission, are enough for me, as is the evaluation of an 80-year-old woman, the granddaughter of the Frashëllinj family married in Elbasan; when she saw the monument she told me: “This is Aqif Pasha. I was a schoolgirl when I exchanged glances with him every day on the street” (Dhimitër Shuteriqi expressed himself in the same way). This elderly woman came to the studio, accompanied by my teacher friend, Luan Belegu, to verify if I had captured the likeness of that figure. The evaluation of the honorable citizens, intellectuals, and artists in the city of Elbasan is also enough for me; one of them, the writer Hyjni Ceka, has written an essay on the erection of this monument.
Where do you feel closer, to painting or to sculpture?
Sculpture is my profession, I was educated for it and I have grown by exercising its professional values, while painting is the food of feelings about the love for nature, for life. Sculpture at first glance has a metaphysical mystery, which burdens you, both physically and logically, but the longer you travel in this hermeticism between the physical load and the logical organization of plastic values, you begin to understand that your feelings always become evident with the elevation of personality, where the desire for life, for nature, tolerance for the contradictions of this world, as well as the adoration of those values, which in your life history and of the nation where you live have been able to create true human feelings, are intertwined. Painting makes you have confidence and pleasure in the visual reflection of feelings towards the beautiful, the real, the play of colors and lines. Painting is more of a pleasure that nature itself brings closer and you just have to love it. Memorie.al
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