Edi Hila
Painter of Transformation

Edi Hila was born in Shkodër in 1944 and works in Tirana. He is affiliated with the Tirana Academy of Fine Arts, where he is an influential teacher. Educated in Shkodër, a city with its beginnings in the ancient world, Hila has always had access to the roots of classical culture. During his studies in the 1960s he experimented with deformation. In 1972 he painted The Planting of Trees, a pleasant picture rendered slightly unreal through the use of colours. Because it departed from the social realist doctrine in force at the time, the painting was used as the pretext for sentencing him to a re-education camp. For several years, forced to live in the countryside and work in the poultry processing factory, he was practically cut off from the ability to practise painting. He produced numerous drawings at that time, first and foremost the series Poultry (1975–1976), documenting rural life, harrowing in the raw realism of its presentation, with existential undertones. In the 1990s, seeking his own path back to painting, Hila carefully observed life evolving after the fall of the Hoxha regime and tried to depict the realities of social transformation. In the groundbreaking series Comfort (1997), the artist captures the inability to satisfy the need for comfort promised to the new society.

He primarily creates series treating a selected theme over several paintings. The most important of Hila’s series include Paradox (2000–2005), Relations (2002–2014), Threat (2003–2009), Roadside Objects (2007–2010), Penthouses (2013), Martyrs of the Nation Boulevard (2015) and A Tent on the Roof of the Car (2017). The realism of his painting is distinct, based on careful observation of detail, which he exploits to convey the psychological truth of the observed phenomenon.