Ibrahim Kodra

Kodra in Milan, in 1961

Ibrahim Kodra (22 April 1918 – 7 February 2006) was an Albanian artist who lived and worked in Milan for many years. Around 1908 together with Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso initiated cubism, based on a strong inspiration of Paul Cézanne's work.

Quotes of Kodra

• I seek the distant horizon/the existence of life/the infinite/the sun's rays/evolution/I seek the irrational/the indestructible/the wave of the sea/the invincible/I seek the unexpected/the timeless/the inteligible/resourcefulness/the institutable/I seek the unstable/the non-transferable/the immutable/the insurrection/I look for the unusual/the irreplaceable/the insoluble/the impossible/I look for the onset/the invisible/the primordial/the unreachable/I seek the organism of the cosmos/the mystery of the air/the breath of the wind/the rising of the dawn/I am looking for a land to cultivate/the first flower/the first seed/of the future/I'm looking for ...
• You paint the visible, I paint the imaginary. You run the risk of copying, I of arbitrariness. Both of these dangers are serious: today, faced with the excess of arbitrariness, of the ephemeral, of unstable and superficial fashions by their nature, the need for the visual information that the painter must offer to the observer of the work resurfaces. Starting from a set of visual data, it will be precisely, as Duchamp said, the spectator who will make, or rather interpret, the painting, developing the many meanings he wants to attribute to it. After all, the spectator has always invoked — and how can we deny him that? — a margin of reading: signs, references, allusions.
• We often wonder how we can get to the reading and then to the interpretation and finally to the judgment on the work of art. In fact, the painter has the «pictorial license», and then the distorting, anamorphic, acromegalic interpretation; the exasperation of lines, shapes and colors belongs to him; the hyperbole of perspective or its annulment; the dreamlike or realistic vision, the material tactility, the abstraction from the immanent reality; the painter can even allow himself to escape from the subject and from the meanings. The modern artist has the right to everything, but not to absolute freedom. In fact, it cannot terminate any relationship with the public, nor suppress the reactions of the latter. What does not suit the painter are cryptic, initiatory languages; those languages, similar to litanies, which tend to transform art into a new religion, no longer made up of holy pictures but of its contemporary equivalents, that is, made up of status symbols and auction bulletins. Picabia, he already sensed all this from the 1920s, he wrote: Notre-Dame de la Peinture.

Quotes about Kodra

Ibrahim Kodra signature

• Incluso su firma es una obra de arte. (Pablo Picasso)
  • Even his signature is a work of art.
• Mon ami, peintre albanais, Kodra. (Pablo Picasso)
  • My friend, Albanian painter, Kodra.
• L'arte di Ibrahim Kodra è un messaggio di pace. (Pope Paul VI)
  • Ibrahim Kodra's art is a message of peace.
• Kodra est le primitif d'une nouvelle société. (Paul Éluard)
  • Kodra is the primitive of a new society.

• Ho un' emozione molto forte, non usuale, quando mi ritorna in mente, vedendo da vicino, la vita artistica di Ibrahim Kodra, il quale non ha mai dimenticato per nessun motivo l' Albania e ne ha fatto il centro della sua arte. Questo e' anche un momento per dimostrare rispetto ma anche per riflettere, conservare e diffondere la figura artistica di questo artista albanese di fama internazionale. (Bamir Topi)
  • I have a very strong, unusual emotion when I am reminded, seeing up close, the artistic life of Ibrahim Kodra, who has never forgotten Albania for any reason and has made it the center of his art. This is also a moment to show respect but also to reflect, preserve and spread the artistic figure of this internationally renowned Albanian artist.
• Kodra, dopo aver lasciato l'Albania in dissidio con il regime, tornò una volta a Tirana e venne a casa da mio padre, anch'egli artista. Alla parete c'era appeso un mio disegno astratto. Lo notò subito e disse "continua su questa strada". Portava un basco, un maglione, una sciarpa, si smarcava dall'uniformità che qui vigeva, la barba era proibita come pure i capelli lunghi. (Edi Rama)
  • Kodra, after leaving Albania in disagreement with the regime, once returned to Tirana and came home to my father, also an artist. An abstract drawing of mine hung on the wall. He noticed it immediately and said "continue on this road". He wore a beret, a sweater, a scarf, strayed from the uniformity that existed here, the beard was forbidden as well as long hair.
• Kodra: Quasi un simbolo generazionale. (Carlo Bo)
  • Kodra: Almost a generational symbol.
• Ibrahim Kodra est le père d'une nouvelle civilisation du monde. (Paul Éluard)
  • Ibrahim Kodra is the father of a new world civilization
• Si direbbe che Kodra tra le sfaccettature del tardo cubismo del primo dopoguerra, abbbia rintracciato le scaglie luminose dei vecchi mosaici bizzantini. I bagliori delle antiche moschee e le favolosità dei pastori bivaccano su le pendici dell'Olimpo. (Marco Valsecchi)
  • It would seem that Kodra, among the facets of the late post-war Cubism, has traced the luminous scales of the old Byzantine mosaics. The glow of the ancient mosques and the fabulousness of the shepherds bivouack on the slopes of the Olympus.
• In quello che è il codice di figurazione del pittore Kodra, persone, cose, interi paesaggi sono schematizzati in squadrate forme geometriche. Attraverso simile processo geometrizzante l'artista, intende chiaramente dare rappresentazione del condizionamento entro il quale è costretto a muoversi, a vivere, l'uomo contemporaneo. La figura umana assume, così rappresentata, un'aspetto robotico, divenendo personificazione dell'uomo postindustriale, il robot cibernetico e informatico, l'uomo numero. (Enrico Crispolti)
  • In what is the figurative code of the painter Kodra, people, things, entire landscapes are schematized in square geometric shapes. Through a similar geometrizing procedure the artist clearly intends to dare the representation of the conditioning within which contemporary man is forced to move, to live. The human figure assumes, thus represented, a robotic aspect, becoming the personification of the post-industrial man, the cybernetic and computer robot, the man number.