Andrea Kushi: life and works

Andrea Kushi (1884–1959) was an Albanian painter. He was one of the most important representatives of the elder generation of Albanian painters.

Kushi was born 1885 in Shkodër, where he spent his childhood and customary first art impulses through the paintings of the well-known Albanian painter Kolë Idromeno. He studied Fine Arts amid 1912 and 1914 in Belgrade, when he goaded to delay the lessons due to the outbreak of World War I. After the combat he went encourage to Belgrade where he successfully completed his studies in 1920.

Kushi dedicated himself to the education of youthful painters. He moved encourage to Albania and became a literary of Fine Arts at the Gymnasium of Elbasan, and later on moved to Tirana in 1931 and the similar year he standard the first drawing scholarly in the country, which some months future in 1932 became the certified Fine Arts School of Albania (Shkolla e vizatimit). Kushi was one of the organizers of the first national art exhibition in Albania, which took place in May 1931 at the Café Kursal in Tirana. The expertise of this exhibition led him and extra painters to the establishment of the Friends of the Arts Society (Shoqnia Miqt’ e Artit), which had as a primary intention the establishment of a national gallery. Between 1937 and 1943 he lived in Korçë where he was in entrance with other known painters with Vangjush Mio and Foto Stamo. Kushi moved back up to Elbasan in 1944 and later on in 1947 to Tirana, where he stayed until his death in 1959.

Kushi’s focus was upon Portraits and Landscape art. Very famous are the paintings Portret vajze (Portrait of a girl) and Bariu me shkop (Shepherd similar to a Staff).

The paintings of Kushi can be admired at the National Gallery of Figurative Arts of Albania in Tirana and at the galleries of Elbasan and Shkodër.