Çlirim Ceka
To rebel with the dictator’s portrait
BY SUZANA VARVARICA KUKA
Several times you hear that artists, and of course painters among them, return to spend some time in Albania. Sometimes not just simply, only to settle their problems or to meet their parents, relatives, or friends, but also to open exhibitions or sell their works from past and recent years. Some return quietly, some without making a fuss, others noisily, some as though they were important and some resentful. Some are welcomed with praise as successful people, supported by power and friends; others pass unnoticed, modestly among the friends of some private gallery.
In the middle of February, meeting Anjelina Ceka, spiritually connected to book publishing and passionate about painting, allowed me to become closely acquainted with a group of paintings by Çlirim Ceka, newly acquired by her. I hurried to see them because works from the creative period before the 1990s are seen far too rarely, and the conversation that followed made it possible for me to meet the painter Ceka. Getting to know such a considerable number of his works pushed me to recount a little more about Çlirim Ceka, the ordeal of his life and work. The reason is entirely tied to the events of the 1970s, one of which involved the painter and destroyed his first family....
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