“Kjo ekspozitë, që do të hyjë në historinë e pikturës sonë”
“This Exhibition Will Go Down in Our History of Painting”

Summary/Abstract: This article explores the reactions to and critical discussions surrounding exhibitions in the first few years of the 1970s, primarily focusing on the 1971 National Figurative Arts Exhibition and the Pranvera exhibition of 1972. It looks closely at the responses of artists to the developments taking place – especially in painting – during Albania’s Ideological and Cultural Revolution, and to map out the ideas and aesthetic approaches that both clashed and mutually reinforced each other during these years. It considers the early reception of works by artists such as Edison Gjergo and Edi Hila, analyzes the complexities of debates over pictorial references to historical modernist styles (such as Cubism and Expressionism), and analyzes the significance of these debates against the background of Albania’s international cultural exchanges at the time. Treating the exhibitions that took place in the early 1970s as a kind of ‘new beginning’ – as contemporary critics in fact saw them – the article explores the direction of culture in state socialist Albania before the more conservative turn of the Fourth Plenum in 1973, arguing for a more diverse and nuanced definition of what artists believed Socialist Realism could accomplish in the Albanian context.

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