Untitled
/1
- Untitled
- Pa titull
- 1997
- acrylic on hardboard
- 172,5 × 139,5 cm
When the war in Kosovo broke out in 1997, Sokol Beqiri spent his time in his studio in Peja and stuck stubbornly to his routines, a strategy that briefly cancelled out the fear and minimized the dehumanizing effects of war. “The Painting Series” (1997) consists of five paintings, three of which form part of the Kontakt Collection. Beqiri wrestled for a long time with painting as a medium: though it accompanied his thought process, it failed to provide him with any resolution. Beqiri has stated that the paintings produced during this period are intentionally repulsive, defy proportion, disregard the harmony of colors, and treat compositional principles as suspect—thereby rendering painting’s formal conventions obsolete in the face of war. In a seeming move towards figuration, he had family members sit for his paintings. Among them we locate the artist himself, his wife, and his daughters. They, too, have been portrayed in confinement. And though Beqiri does not deploy canvas as a vehicle of symbolic expression, “The Painting Series” does seek to encapsulate the fear that his family and community felt during the war. E.K.